VIRTUAL OP250

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we understand the health and safety protocols might impact the ways we collaborate with you school. Whether schools are going to be entirely online, in schools with safety protocols, or doing a hybrid model of on- and offline learning, we find it important to be as flexible to your needs as we can.

Due to this, we at Operation250 are dedicated to being as helpful as can be in this unprecedented environment. As can be found in our What We Offer section, many of our offerings are typically delivered in-person and, at-times, in large groups. While these types of events might not be possible in an effort to keep students, educators, Op250 team members and all of their families safe, we are exploring virtual offerings for schools.

Existing Ways to Incorporate Op250

In the case that in-person programs from outside sources such as Op250 might not be allowed in the coming school year, students and teachers might still be in the classroom to some extent. You can find a series of lesson plans, case studies, and readings that are built to use and implement into your classroom here.

Virtual Workshops

With the prospects of in-person events in the coming school year being increasingly unlikely, we are dedicated to being flexible to schools’ needs in an effort of delivering Operation250’s program. Due to the uncertain times, we will work with you and your school to try and formulate an accommodating program to fit your needs. Importantly, we would require a school representative (teacher, administrator, counselor, etc.) to be present online during any workshop and we require programming to be hosted on the school platform. Potential options for programming are detailed below:

Single-Day workshop

The single day workshop is a standard virtual lesson with students. This is series of video conferences for the students to partake in. The workshop includes multiple ongoing “classrooms” that the students bounce between throughout the workshop. Some of the elements of the “classroom” will include:

-          Interactive polling

-          Virtual brainstorming

-          Videos

-          Discussion boards

-          And More!

Students will be required to join certain “classrooms” at different times throughout the lesson. Being cognizant of timing and the challenges associated with keeping students engaged throughout the virtual workshop, this program will be fast moving and no longer than 2-hours.

For topics, the traditional student workshop covers three main areas: online behavior, hate, and community problem-solving. For this lesson, elements of the problem-solving activity will change to focus on problem identification and solution brainstorming with timing in mind. If interested in a single-day virtual workshop, the topic’s specifics will be discussed and developed to fit the school.

Week-Long Workshop

A one-week virtual workshop is a multi-day learning experience that combine virtual communication and “outside” work. The workshops will consist of three short virtual classroom sessions with short assignments between them. Each of the virtual classroom sessions will focus on a new topic: hate, online behavior, and community problem solving.

These virtual classes will include all of the above interactive elements and allow for more in-depth learning opportunities by utilizing the time between virtual sessions. During those times, Op250 can either work with an educator to deliver certain materials with students in-class or the Op250 team can assign readings and quick assignments to be completed in the students’ own time.

The week-long workshop allows the benefit of time to critically analyze and collaborate with the students virtually. The students will have the chance to interact with an Op250 team member directly via video chat, be challenged with materials, videos, and discussions throughout the workshop, and partake in an exciting project-based learning opportunity throughout the week. In the final session, students will be asked to share their community problem-solving solution that is aimed at improving one of the problems discussed throughout the week. This small project will be asked to be a digital solution and allow for the students to become creative in their solution building.

Long-Term Workshop    

The long-term virtual student workshop can be developed for your school to be between 1-3 months in length and address the main topics of hate, online behavior, and community problem solving. The long-term workshop offers many benefits that aren’t offered in some of the shorter options:

-          Greater flexibility for the students and schools with regards to time.

-          Ongoing project-based learning allows for more “concrete” solution building by the students.

-          Greater time for in-depth analysis on readings, worksheets, and videos.

-          Flexible lessons that can be built depending on student driven discussions and interests between virtual sessions.

The long-term program will be developed and delivered to best fit to the school’s schedule. The program will require a minimum of three video conferencing classrooms to engage in critical discussions, deliver short lessons, and answer any questions about the work that the students will be engaging with between virtual sessions.  

Throughout the workshop, the students will be tasked with identifying problems in their community related to the workshop’s topics and to develop their own solutions to them. At its completion, the students will be asked to virtually present their “solution plan” which the Operation250 team will assist in formatting and designing with the students.

Combined with a minimum of 120-minutes of video conferencing, the students will also be asked to complete a small series of readings, worksheets, videos, and podcasts in the time between video conferencing sessions while also ongoing work on the project.

Educator Options

As expressed in the What We Offer section of our website, our work with educators can look many different ways. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our in-person offerings are being altered to be virtual. Moving forward we will offer curriculum consultation, video trainings, and content building all virtually. Please reach out to us here to learn more.

Maintaining Programmatic Goals

To date, Operation250 has worked with over 1,000 students and educators in Massachusetts through our in-person workshops and lecture series. We find the peer-to-peer lessons and critical classroom discussions to be critical elements to the workshop programming we deliver. With the movement to online workshops, we have and will continue to work hard at designing a program that maintains the learning objectives while also mimicking the engaging and critical elements that we deliver in the classroom.

Find below the Operation250 learning model that we have designed and measured for our offline programming with students.

What this model shows is that the combination of lessons focusing on anti-hate, online safety, and problem solving all work together to achieve the long-term goal of improved online behavior. In designing this program, it was built with in-person learning in mind, however we at Operation250 have worked hard to transition this model to fit virtual learning.

In developing the virtual programming, we are working with program evaluators who specialize in assessing the effectiveness of program delivery. This collaboration will ensure that the virtual offerings achieve the promised goals consistent to those offered with our in-person workshops. In the above student workshop offerings, the in-depth discussions and interactive activities will be changed to involve videos, podcast listening, virtual discussion boards, and the problem-solving activity incorporating and embracing the online capabilities that aren’t available in the classroom.