Instructional Resources

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…

The Teaching Skills That Matter–SkillBlox (TSTM-SkillBlox) instructional support pilot was designed to help adult education teachers integrate instruction aligned with the TSTM framework, a U.S. Department of Education initiative supporting learners’ academic and employment goals. At the center of the pilot was SkillBlox, an emerging digital application that enables teachers to find, organize, and share open educational resources aligned to TSTM skills and topics. Teachers also received professional development webinars and ongoing support to apply TSTM…

by John TrerotolaCILIA-T (Content Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support) is a comprehensive curriculum that has been designed for adult learners with the goal of enhancing students’ academic English skills, civic understanding, and digital literacy. (While the CILIA-T curriculum is primarily leveled for adult ESL classrooms, it also includes many elements that can be effectively adapted for pre-HSE and HSE settings. As a GED English and Social Studies teacher—and as a member of the team that developed CILIA-T—I have incorporated…

When the Adult Numeracy in the Digital Era (ANDE) team set out to design and pilot a new adult numeracy course in Pennsylvania, they began with an ambitious idea: could successful mathematics expertise and technology originally developed for K–12 and postsecondary settings be meaningfully adapted for adult basic education (ABE)?

The Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support (CILIA-T) was designed to integrate civics, U.S. history, and academic English with digital skills development through a 16-module open-access curriculum. From the outset, the team recognized that dissemination needed to be more than a final step at the end of the grant period. Building visibility early, even before the curriculum was complete, would help generate interest, cultivate partnerships, and support eventual adoption. This required new thinking: what can be shared when the…

SkillBlox was envisioned as a free application to help teachers find, organize, and share digital learning resources aligned with the Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM) framework. Rather than serving as a complete curriculum, it was meant to be a flexible lesson design tool, allowing educators to curate high-quality open educational resources into “Blox” of activities they could use directly with learners. The promise of SkillBlox was to make instructional planning more efficient, collaborative, and aligned with evidence-based teaching practices.

Numeracy skills, or the ability to understand and calculate using simple numbers, along with digital literacy and problem-solving abilities, enable a person to engage with and make sense of the world around them. These essential skills are more critical than ever for economic mobility and healthy civic participation in today’s society. Yet, the latest global survey of adult skills presents a troubling picture for the United States. Among adults in America, these skills have declined in recent years. According to the most recent PIAAC report, a third of U.S.…

This blog is reposted from content previously shared on the TSTM-SkillBlox Research project page by the EdTech Center @ World Education.In the last TSTM-SkillBlox blog, the World Education team described our process for developing new SkillBlox features. Leveraging a design research approach to gather user insights about teaching and learning, our aim has been to create practical tools and advance research that supports skill-aligned instruction through open education resources (OER). Iterative Feature DevelopmentThrough focus group conversations,…