Adult Learning

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…

The AutoTutor for Adult Reading Comprehension (ARC) project is developing and testing an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) designed to improve reading comprehension for adults with limited literacy skills. The approach uses collaborative “trialogues” among a teacher agent, a peer student agent, and the adult learner to model effective comprehension strategies. Initial research took place in classrooms, but the project’s long-term goal was to make the tool accessible inside and outside of classrooms, with or without a supporting curriculum. In 2023, this work…

The Writing in Adult Secondary Education (W-ASE) Project was designed to address a two-fold challenge in adult education: how to help learners develop both digital writing skills and their ability to write effective argumentative essays. Drawing on an evidence-based curriculum originally designed for college students who struggled with writing, the W-ASE team adapted lessons for adult learners at the National Reporting System for Adult Education (NRS) levels 2–6 (high beginning through advanced literacy skills). The intervention included 16 lessons delivered…