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The ASAP initiative focuses on discovering and documenting assessment needs in adult education and workforce development and responding to those needs through the creation of online banks of literacy and numeracy tasks. These assessments are intended to serve adult learners, educators, employers, and researchers. Rather than functioning as a traditional academic study, ASAP is primarily a product development effort informed by a series of user experience (UX) studies. The development process has been grounded in extensive practitioner input, beginning with a…

The Adult Numeracy in the Digital Era (ANDE) project set out to evaluate a technology-enhanced numeracy course across multiple sites in Pennsylvania. ANDE is a technology-enhanced, standards-aligned adult numeracy course and accompanying professional development package of supports for building classroom community, productive mindsets, and effective learning habits.

The Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support (CILIA-T) was designed not only for learners but also with teachers in mind. Developed through two pilot rounds with six teachers and 95 learners across Minnesota, the project emphasized content integration, technology use, and classroom community. Teachers were expected to facilitate lessons that combined reading, writing, listening, and speaking with civics and history content, while also supporting learners’ digital literacy.

The ASAP initiative is focused on identifying and responding to assessment needs in adult education and workforce development through the creation of online banks of literacy and numeracy tasks. Designed to support adult learners, educators, employers, and researchers, ASAP is primarily a product development effort informed by a series of user experience (UX) studies. These studies have involved adult education practitioners and learners across the United States, with needs assessment data collected in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and New York.…

WestEd has released a news release highlighting the latest findings from the ANDE study and the launch of ANDE OER.

The Writing in Adult Secondary Education (W-ASE) Project has two aims: to design and evaluate a technology-supported curriculum for teaching adult learners how to write an argumentative essay using a word processor on a computer; and, to develop a concurrent professional development delivery model to help teachers use our curriculum. The curriculum includes 16 lessons to be taught twice a week over 2-3 months at adult education programs. It includes digital writing skills instruction, as well as a focus on argumentative essay writing skills, strategies, and…

Adult Numeracy in the Digital Era (ANDE) is a technology-enhanced, standards-aligned numeracy course designed to meet the needs of adult learners and their instructors. The project was structured in four phases: development, feasibility testing, impact study, and dissemination, and aimed to produce a flexible, research-informed curriculum grounded in the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS Levels C and D). The intervention design combined instructional modules with professional development supports that emphasized classroom community, mathematics…

The Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support (CILIA-T) project developed a 16-module, open-access curriculum integrating civics and U.S. history content with academic English and digital literacy. Piloted in Minnesota across six classes and nearly 100 students, CILIA-T was designed to serve a wide range of adult learners: intermediate and advanced English learners, pre-GED and GED students, and those preparing for citizenship or strengthening basic literacy. Implementing such a curriculum in real-world adult education programs…

The ASAP initiative was launched to address a persistent gap in adult education and workforce development: the lack of flexible, meaningful assessment tools that reflect the real skills adult learners use in educational, workplace, and everyday contexts. ASAP aims to discover and document assessment needs across adult education and workforce systems and to meet those needs by developing online banks of literacy and numeracy tasks. Rather than approaching this work as a traditional academic study, ASAP has functioned primarily as a product development effort…

SkillBlox is a free application designed to help teachers locate, organize, and share open educational resources (OER) within collections called “Blox.” These collections can then be shared with learners or other teachers, offering flexible ways to supplement instruction. Based on lessons from prior studies of Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM) implementation, the TSTM-SkillBlox project sought to improve the platform’s usability, curate high-quality OER, and test whether teachers could effectively use SkillBlox to align their instruction with TSTM’s skills and…