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Media
Kit: Resist Media
Kit: Research Media
Kit: Software |
Background: Changing Social Behavior Through Software Social behavior matters a lot in life. People skills are the key to success in many areas. People who can empathize and assert themselves, communicate clearly and manage their feelings do better across the board - at work, school and home. In fact, a growing body of evidence shows these soft skills are more important to success than IQ and technical expertise combined. THE PROBLEM: SOCIAL INTERACTION IS HARDER, YET MORE NECESSARY, THAN EVER BEFORE. But social interaction is harder than ever before and experts like Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) say people's social abilities are getting worse, not better. The flattening of organizations, increased emphasis on team work, and a service and knowledge-based economy, drive the pressure for more interaction. Growing diversity contributes to the increased complexity of interaction. The shattering of family structures and decline of religious institutions contribute to peoples' declining ability to interact easily and effectively. The result: needless academic failure and playground violence at school, loss of productivity at work, personal heartbreak - - and BIG costs, both social and economic. Solution: Social Learning Neither emotional intelligence, nor the social behavior that arises from it, is innate. They have both been shown to be eminently learnable, but only under certain conditions. These are intangible abilities. Lots of people have tried teaching them. Many approaches don't work. The ones that do are costly and often miss the "teachable moment." To date, they've been mostly isolated in academic and treatment centers across the country. Inefficiencies in current methods Private therapy is one way to learn these skills. But it is expensive, has a stigma attached for many people, is often ineffective, and is simply not scaleable, being more suited for transmitting oral tradition in a primitive society, than providing wide scale training in an industrialized one. Over the last two decades, Social Behavior training has begun to find its way into schools, but teachers have not themselves been trained in these new areas, and are already overwhelmed with too many subjects to teach, in too few hours, to too many kids, with too many different learning needs and styles. Under the heading "soft skills" - Social Behavior training has been a growing part of corporate training as well. However, it is expensive, a time sponge, of uneven quality, can't be individualized, requires synchronizing worker's schedules, and forces public exposure in areas that traditionally have been considered a private domain. Technology offers an opportunity Technology, especially broadband internet technology, shows great potential for solving some of these problems. It is effective as a delivery method for technical training, with strong retention rates, and protections of privacy. However, to be effective for social learning, the linear, text-based, knowledge transfer model used for teaching computer programming is not enough. Behavior training, especially training in sensitive areas of social behavior, involves the kind of interactive, emotionally engaging skill building that requires rich media, and therefore media-rich broadband, to be effective. What if there were a systematic, scaleable, effective way to teach people these seemingly intangible abilities? Imagine, for instance, that you could teach "people skills" with affordable software, and that you could do it when, where, and how users liked, protecting their privacy. No sector of society would be immune to this solution. Teachers could control their classrooms, without becoming despots. Children could appreciate - not fear - diversity, have less reason to turn to drugs, less risk of becoming either a victim or victimizer, and better chances of graduating. As result, universities would fill up - instead of prisons or treatment centers - and corporations would find well-trained, effective workers at home, not abroad. Corporations could have fewer harassment related law suits and more cohesive teams, improving productivity and the bottom line. That's a big IF. Some analysts think it can't happen. It's counter-intuitive to think computer could teach humans to feel, or care, or assert their rights. But for decades the public has been concerned about the negative influence of media on social behavior. If people can learn bad things from TV and video games, it stands to reason they could also learn good things. Ripple Effects Solution Ripple Effects is pioneering a solution through a new category of software, a media rich Social Learning Software Application, based on a proprietary learning system and media-rich content. It works, is cost effective and is available 24/7. Ripple Effects groundbreaking Social Learning Software Application is unlike any other software or prevention program currently available. It combines under one electronic roof research proven strategies that have been scattered in research and treatment centers across the country. It is comprehensive in scope, interactive, includes a broad range of learning approaches, is responsive to learning style differences, has a media-rich format, is flexible, authentic, scaleable and actually fun to use. Researchers from Columbia and NYU have shown its effectiveness, not only in dramatically changing social behavior, but in dramatically improving performance outcomes and cutting costs as well. It has been endorsed by experts and won prestigious awards from the software, education, health and communications industries. For further information, please contact: Sarah
Berg or Alice Ray See a full media kit online. |
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