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Lessons on Digital Inclusion: Learning Through CREATE Adult Skills Network Research

There is a great need to use technology in adult education. In this blog post, we’ll examine digital inclusion challenges that impeded using technology in adult education, and how some of the field’s foremost researchers and practitioners are addressing these issues. 

About 43 million U.S. adults struggle with low literacy (Mamedova & Pawlawski, 2019). This is an equity issue because strong foundational skills help adults gain secondary education credentials. These credentials open up post-secondary education options and career growth, leading to higher wages (Hanushek et al., 2015). 

Adult learners benefit from learning options that are flexible and relevant in their lives (Reder et al., 2020). Online learning is more flexible than in-person learning, which can help learners overcome barriers related to scheduling and commuting (Patterson; 2018; Pavlakou et al., 2019) and boost opportunities to extend and personalize learning (Digital Resilience in the American Workforce, 2022; McCain, 2009). However, access to computers and broadband internet, and gaining confidence using new skills, are also challenges for many adult learners, which can put education out of their reach.

Digital Inclusion Challenges and The CREATE Adult Skills Network

Researchers and adult education providers in the CREATE Adult Skills Network (“CREATE”) have observed these barriers in their work. CREATE is a national research network of six research teams, practitioners, and education leaders from across the U.S. who are engaging adult learners at the foundational and secondary levels. This national initiative, funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, is using research and intervention to build knowledge about technology use to support teaching and learning in adult education. 

Over the last three years, CREATE’s research teams have noted challenges providing equitable access to quality instruction delivered though the technologies and interventions that are central to their studies. These digital equity issues have required the research teams to rethink intervention design and/or redefined their expectations for how they would be used. 

Based on these experiences, let’s review how the research teams are responding to these challenges.

Issue 1 - Access

Not all learners have access to devices and Wi-Fi to use the interventions the research teams have designed. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more common for adult education classrooms to have laptops and Wi-Fi (Belzer et al., 2022). But access is still an issue. These programs are not available everywhere and, even when they are, demand often outweighs availability. 

CREATE teams have responded in several ways.

  • The Writing in Adult Secondary Education Classes (W-ASE) Project provided laptops, headphones, mice, and portable Wi-Fi for students to use during class or at home at programs that did not have these resources. Additionally, the W-ASE team promotes using Google Docs because it is freely available to the students and is a tool that they can use to write in their daily lives. 
  • When the Adult Numeracy in the Digital Era (ANDE) project team learned that some students did not have home access to either the internet or devices for online preparation and exercises for the course, they worked with instructors to add 30 minutes before each class start time for students to complete their online work.
  • The Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support (CILIA-T) team has integrated mobile-friendly digital tools, including mini-assessments and video tutorials, into their study. This means that learners can access these resources whenever and wherever on their mobile devices, even if they don’t have a computer or Wi-Fi.

Issue 2 - Digital Skills Gaps

Students have digital skills gaps that complicate use of new technologies. Digital proficiencies are incredibly varied among the participants involved in the CREATE studies, making tailoring instruction difficult. Nearly all of the CREATE research teams have made this observation, and are in turn addressing this challenge in their intervention design and implementation. A common strategy employed by the CREATE research teams is to pre-teach some foundational digital skills before implementing or as part of the intervention. 

  • The AutoTutor-Adult Reading Comprehension (ARC) team created a “digital skills tutorial” to support independent use of AutoTutor outside of class, which framed digital skills “how tos” within the AutoTutor application. 
  • Two teams, the ARC team and CILIA-T, have partnered with Literacy Minnesota to use Northstar Digital Literacy Assessment. The free and widely used Northstar Assessment system is a set of standards-aligned, web-administered, interactive assessments that evaluate foundational-level adult digital literacy competencies. It has subtests called Essential Computer Skills, Essential Software Skills, and Using Technology in Daily Life. It also offers interactive curricula and instructional content aligned to each of the Northstar standards for use in educational sites. 
  • The W-ASE team created a keyboarding test that measures accuracy and speed, along with a writing task that assesses digital literacy and word processing knowledge. The W-ASE team continues to do user experience testing on free resources for digital literacy and keyboarding skills and introduce promising resources to teachers and students. The team has also created short videos and directions for using Google Docs and Microsoft Word that instructors and students alike can uses 
  • The CILIA-T team assesses digital skills prior to teaching to determine what skills learners already have, and where educational reinforcement is needed. There are six videos and accompanying lesson plans to build digital proficiencies, which learners can use in class or independently. 
  • The CILIA-T team is careful to introduce only one new application (e.g., WhatsApp, Quizlet), along with pre teaching the digital skills required to use it. Learners are able to review digital skills throughout the whole curriculum because they are integrated with the language and content teaching. The team is thinking deeper about diversity of learners through an accessibility lens, and being intentional about creating consistent opportunities for learners within each instructional module to draw from their diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
  • Through engagement with the online platform and course materials, all ANDE students and instructors have opportunities to develop basic digital literacy skills, including skills using learning technologies. To support them, ANDE has developed a set of instructor- and student-facing guides scaffolding the use of digital tools and materials, as well as providing direct access to Northstar. 
  • The Adult Skills Assessment Project (ASAP) team is creating innovative, digital assessments that incorporate culturally responsive and personalized assessment principles to tailor numeracy and literacy assessments to support student learning. These assessments will be adapted to the literacy levels of the learner, bridge workplace and academic contexts, and be digitally friendly to adult learners. 
  • The Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM)-SkillBlox team has noticed that many learners struggle with creating and logging into online accounts because of digital skills gaps. The TSTM-SkillBlox team’s research has shown that teachers value instructional tools that do not require students to log in because it makes accessing learning resources easier. However, student access to SkillBlox content without logging in limits the data the team can collect about learners’ use. The team has responded with improved user guides to bridge the challenge learners have with accounts. They also make clear during teacher onboarding that the research depends on having learners log in. The SkillBlox team is also looking to future development opportunities to add value to learner experience when logging in.

Issue 3 - Technology Integration Challenges.

Some instructors struggle using technology in instruction. As the CREATE teams began field testing their interventions, many realized that it is not only the learners, but also teachers, in adult education settings who have diverse digital skill sets. The teams’ research shows that instructors’ digital skills and preferred approaches to instructional technology integration need to be understood, and that instructors need supports if the designed interventions are to be used as proposed in the studies. 

  • The ANDE team noticed the importance of creating opportunities for hands-on instructor practice navigating platforms. 
  • The TSTM-SkillBlox team observed that educators lacked time, and sometimes training and skills, to produce all of their own digital content. Participating teachers noted the value of opportunities for supported collaboration and resource sharing to improve their access to digital instructional content and increase their own skills producing it. The SkillBlox team has created resources to support instructors in developing these skills, which are available on the project webpage. The resulting instructional content is available in the SkillBlox library
  • The W-ASE team has created resources to help teachers integrate word processing and digital literacy in their classrooms. In our soon-to-be released teacher survey, some of the items the team is measuring are technology resources and usage among adult education programs. W-ASE team experiences with teachers have shown the need to include a more holistic approach to technology and writing in professional development. 
  • CILIA-T created instructor guides on how to use the digital tools. The team has learned valuable information in the pilot phase about barriers to access and, in turn, they are reformatting materials for teachers to use in a hybrid/hyflex model of instruction and learning.

Conclusion

The challenges of digital inclusion that CREATE research teams are seeing in their research mirror the reality that adult education teachers and learners experience daily. These observations, shown in research and woven into the interventions developed as part of that research, bring insights that can benefit the adult education field more broadly. With the CREATE research projects now in year three of five years of research, you can follow along for updates on LinkedIn or through our newsletter to learn about their findings in these final two years of the initiative.

References

Belzer, A., Leon, T., Patterson, M., Salas‐Isnardi, F., Vanek, J., & Webb, C. (2022). From rapid emergency response to scaling and sustaining innovation: Adult foundational education in the time of COVID‐19. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2022 (173-174), 81-91. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ace.20454 

Digital Resilience in the American Workforce: Findings from a National Landscape Scan on Adult Digital Literacy Instruction. (2022). World Education and Jobs for the Future, Safal Partners, World Education. https://lincs.ed.gov/state-resources/federal-initiatives/draw/landscape 

Hanushek, E. A., Schwerdt, G., Wiederhold, S., & Woessmann, L. (2015). Returns to skills around the world: Evidence from PIAAC. European Economic Review, 73, 103–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2014.10.006 

Mamdova, S., & Palowski, E. (2019). Data point: Adult literacy in the United States (OECD Skills Outlook). OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264204256-en 

McCain, M. (2009). The power of technology: expanding access to adult education & workforce skills through distance learning. http://www.caalusa.org/POWER_OF_TECH.pdf 

Patterson, M. B. (2018). The Forgotten 90%: Adult Nonparticipation in Education. Adult Education Quarterly, 68(1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713617731810 

Pavlakou, E., Kalachanis, K., Kefali, S., & Tsiouni, E. (2019). E-Learning and Transformative Learning in Adult Training. Journal of Studies in Education, 9 (2), 17. https://doi.org/10.5296/jse.v9i2.14265 

Reder, S., Gauly, B., & Lechner, C. (2020). Practice makes perfect: Practice engagement theory and the development of adult literacy and numeracy proficiency. International Review of Education, 66(2–3), 267–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-020-09830-5