FAQs

What is Operation250?

Operation250 is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Massachusetts that delivers workshops to students and educators about online safety, hate and extremism, and critical problem solving.

How did you start?

Op250 started as part of a collegiate program with the Department of Homeland Security back in 2016 where student groups were challenged to develop a program that countered the Islamic State online. What we decided to develop was an educational platform that blended online safety education with discussion starters for teachers and parents about terrorism.

Is that what you still do?

We have changed a lot. After the competition of the DHS program, we broadened our scope exponentially, developed in-person programming (and made that our main product), and began to focus more specifically on online safety and anti-hate. While one of our aims is to address issues related to extremism, we do this through internet safety education, anti-hate curriculum, and critical problem solving. We also deliver workshops that solely look at internet safety education and online decision-making. Below shows a table of what we aim to do:

What do these workshops look like?

For students, we design a 3-step workshop. The students start with receiving a program that focuses on hate. For example, a lesson that we ran with 6th graders started with and activity focusing on identity, their feelings toward those who might identify different to them (using an Android/iPhone activity), and identifying the differences between stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. This lesson lasts typically between 30-40 minutes.

Once the students receive this lesson, they then receive a lesson about online behavior and online decision making. Using the same workshops example from above, the students learned about the differences between their behavior online opposed to it offline, they then reflected on what a positive and negative behavior online was, and then return to how invisibility online can be a cause for those negative behaviors and ways of avoiding that.

Lastly, the students partake in a problem-solving activity. This is a chance for the students to reflect on some of what was discussed throughout the day, how it effects their community, school, and classroom, and develop an idea to help impact that problem themselves. In the 6th grade example, the students wanted of starting a school newspaper where students would be able to write articles promoting action against bullying; while others thought about a Tik Tok campaign focused on created videos about how to properly intervene when someone is a victim to hate online.

The above is a framework and is used to design original programming for each school. If you are interested in learning more about these workshops, feel free to contact us.

Do you do any work with teachers?

We do. We have done content/curriculum consultation, material building, and training presentations. Most commonly our work with teachers is done through conferences and webinars. These webinars have focused on our approach to teach online safety and hate in a classroom, a review of research about internet safety education and hate, and we share some of the own research we have conducted with our academic partners.

How old are the student groups you work with?

We have worked with student groups as young as 2nd grade and as old as seniors in high school. Each workshop is designed to be age appropriate in content and timing.

Where does your funding come from?

We currently are mainly grant funded or subcontractors on ongoing grant projects. This funding comes from the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

What is the National Institute of Justice grant to do?

We are subject to a research project with a team of researchers from University of Massachusetts Lowell, Georgia State University, and Harvard University to determine the effectiveness of our program. This project is measuring our student workshop program’s effectiveness on youth online behavior, safer online decision making, their awareness of risks and threats online, and discriminatory tendencies.

This grant is still ongoing, and results are pending as we continue to deliver workshops and our partners gather the data. This information being gathered is entirely anonymous and no personal identifiable information is being gathered. All research has been reviewed and abides by Institutional Review Board policies. We take student security incredibly seriously.

What is the Department of Homeland Security grant to do?

This grant is to deliver workshops, lectures, and trainings to students and educators. This is to simply replicate our program (above) and continue to deliver the educational workshops and trainings to schools in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire area. Again, absolutely no personal identifiable information is collected from the students or schools in these workshops.

Since your funding comes from government entities, does that mean you share all information with them?

Not at all. First, we do not collect any personal identifiable information, but rather just try and gather an understanding for what the audience took away from the workshop or lecture. The only information we share with the NIJ and DHS is broad brush, snapshot results of workshops. For the NIJ, the Op250 program is undergoing rigorous evaluation that is abiding by Institutional Review Board guidelines to ensure all information is safe and being collected ethically. These results will eventually be turned into published pieces in peer-reviewed journals.

With DHS, the only information that is being shared is overall questionnaire results reviewing the program after workshops. No personal identifiable information is being collected whatsoever; only general overviews of the information gathered by the audience post-workshop to ensure we achieved our intended goals. This work also will receive IRB approval before collecting any questionnaires after the workshop.

Do you do any work outside of the Northeast in the US?

For our in-person workshops we can only deliver these in the Northeast area of the United States due to travel. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have moved our programming online allowing for wider reach throughout the US. Please find our virtual workshop offerings here.

How can someone get in touch with you to possibly get Op250 programming to our school?

Please contact us through our website. Give us a day or two to get back to you and we can begin a dialogue about building a program for your school.

Do you do workshops for non-schools?

We absolutely do!

Do you offer translations of your services?

Yes, click here to see how you can submit a request.