U of Nine App Addresses Campus Sexual Misconduct with Gamification

Author: Association of Title IX Administrators
Published: 27th Oct 2015
Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A
Additional References: LGBT Adolescents Publications

Summary: U of Nine App helps colleges educate students and employees about sexual violence, sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, alcohol abuse, and stalking.

Main Document

U of Nine is approaching the problem of campus sexual misconduct from a fresh, potent and technologically savvy perspective - engaging students on these important topics via their mobile devices. ATIXA has assembled two dozen subject matter experts from across higher education to review and develop the gamified, quiz-based content for U of Nine. Each quiz was subjected to intense focus-group analysis, along with feedback from students on pilot-site campuses around the country. Pilot sites ranged from community colleges to four-year residential universities and online institutions.

Title IX provides protection from sex discrimination on college campuses and in schools, including sexual harassment and sexual violence. U of Nine takes its name from Title IX, and is designed specifically to meet the training and education requirements the law mandates. Legal protections are in place, but we need more. A user-friendly social game is a perfect platform to educate, train and empower. The objective of U of Nine is not to replace prevention programs, great lectures, presentations or speakers that are already in place on many college campuses, but to reinforce the content of those programs and to help students and employees better engage with that content effectively.

ATIXA Executive Director Brett A. Sokolow, Esq stated, "There are a lot of solid online products helping colleges to prevent sexual violence, so we designed U of Nine to fill a gap that other products do not. Every year, colleges are required to provide ongoing awareness and education campaigns, and our app-based approach takes those campaigns to students and employees, wherever they are, on demand. There is no magic prevention pill, but we're adding our expertise to the concerted effort to make campuses safer for students and employees."

U of Nine includes easy-to-understand analytics on student and employee usage, engagement with content, and compliance with programs like Title IX and VAWA Section 304, all of which can be exported to a variety of formats.

U of Nine is especially beneficial for campuses looking for a cost-effective way to offer awareness and education content for hard-to-reach audiences such as:

• Dual enrolled students
• Non-residential students
• Community college students
• Students enrolled in online courses
• Students enrolled in study abroad sites
• Non-degree seeking and part-time students
• Transfer students
• Adjunct faculty
• Employees at remote and extension sites
• Employees at multiple campus locations or study abroad sites
• Students at extension sites or multiple campus locations
• Upper class students who don't attend lectures, speakers or plays

Lawrence Schwartz, CEO of Trivie, commented,

"In an environment of short attention spans and rapid technological change, the micro learning method is an effective way for colleges and universities to train their students and faculty on important information in real time. This granular, short-burst approach to training enables U of Nine campuses to better engage their students, reinforce Title IX and VAWA Section 304 compliance, and promote campus safety."

Each U of Nine quiz is no more than five questions long, and the hints and explanations that come within each question help students better understand and consequently remember the content. These easy to play quizzes can be sent to students at any time via push notifications to reinforce Title IX content during the school year for continual learning and compliance.

In partnership with ATIXA, the Association of Title IX Administrators, and Trivie, Inc., U of Nine is a world-class, app-based solution to help colleges and universities reach and educate students and employees about sexual violence, sexual harassment, alcohol abuse, intimate partner violence and stalking.