Skip Navigation

Building Adult Skills and Attainment Through Technology Research Network

Grantees

- OR -

Investigator

- OR -

Goals

- OR -

FY Awards

2021

- OR -

Contact:

Dr. Meredith Larson
(202) 804-7451
Meredith.Larson@ed.gov

Description:

In FY 2021, IES competed the Building Adult Skills and Attainment Through Technology Research Network through the Research Network Focused on Critical Problems of Policy and Practice grant program to fulfill NCER's National Education Research and Development Centers (R&D Centers) goals for adult education. The goal of this network is to meet the needs of millions of U.S. adults with low foundational skills through exploring, developing, and piloting technology-supported innovation and facilitating the adoption of technology for adult learners.

The funded projects, now called the CREATE Adult Skills Network (Collaborative Research for Educating Adults with Technology Enhancements), include six research teams and a network lead with the mission to coordinated efforts in two areas: (1) basic and applied research and (2) dissemination and leadership.

Watch the CREATE Adult Skills Network's  kick-off webinar.

Descriptions of each of the projects are as follows:

Adult Skills Network Lead
Principal Investigator: Stephanie Cronen, American Institutes for Research (AIR)
The Adult Skills Network (ASN) lead serves two primary roles to help the ASN meet its goal: to coordinate and help manage and facilitate the work of all ASN grantees and to provide national leadership in knowledge generation and translation and guides large-scale dissemination of research-based resources to practitioners and other stakeholders in a form they can effectively use.

Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM)–SkillBlox Research Team
Principal Investigator: Stephanie Cronen, American Institutes for Research (AIR)
This research team will explore the rollout of the Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM) initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) and will develop and pilot test instructional resources for TSTM.

Adult Numeracy in the Digital Era: Adaptive Technology for Quantitative and Digital Literacy
Principal Investigator: Ann Edwards, WestEd
This research team will develop and pilot test a technology-enabled adult numeracy course and corresponding professional development designed for adult basic education learners.

Writing in Adult Secondary Education Classes (W-ASE)
Principal Investigator: Cynthia Puranik, Georgia State University
This research team will develop a writing curriculum for learners in adult secondary education (ASE) classes along with a professional development (PD) delivery model, materials, and online resources for instructors and students.

Adult Skills Assessment Program: Actionable Assessments for Adult Learners
Principal Investigator: Stephen Sireci, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
This research team will create a digital, online repository of assessment tasks in literacy, numeracy, and the intersection of these two domains to provide effective, comprehensive measures of academic constructs important to the success of all adult learners.

Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support
Principal Investigator: Aydin Durgunoglu, University of Minnesota
This research team will develop a curriculum, called CILIA-T (Content- Integrated Language Instruction for Adult with Technology Support), which will provide rigorous academic content as part of English language instruction for adult learners and support learners' goals such as participating more fully in their communities and citizenship.

Developing and Implementing a Technology-Based Reading Comprehension Instruction System for Adult Literacy Students
Principal Investigator: John Sabatini, University of Memphis
This research team, which joined the network in FY22, will refine and pilot test an interactive, online, stand-alone reading comprehension practice tool for adult literacy students reading between the 3rd- and 8th-grade level, called AutoTutor for Adult Reading Comprehension (AT-ARC).