IDEAL Consortium is a community of practice for state-level staff who support digital education in WIOA-funded adult education. The IDEAL spring learning circles bring together members from IDEAL states (e.g., state office staff, professional development leaders and facilitators)  to share ideas, identify solutions to challenges, and collaboratively develop resources. In 2024, the learning circles convened around these prioritized issues identified by the membership: leveraging Learning Management Systems for quality instruction, teaching hyflex courses, using digital literacy plans, and integrating Artificial Intelligence tools. This blog post is part of a series authored by the IDEAL Learning Circles facilitators, reporting on key insights that grew from them.

IDEAL members recognized that they needed to construct or expand their current planning processes in order to address learners’ varying digital skills within their program design.  To address this challenge, the IDEAL Consortium facilitated a learning circle on a strategy called Digital Literacy Planning, which highlighted how state staff learned about learners’ digital skills and subsequently used that information to monitor students’ progress and inform future planning efforts. This offered participants a forum for learning from several examples in use in IDEAL member states. Participants met 3 times in online meetings facilitated by Jamie Harris and Alexis Cherewka and communicated between sessions using the Learning Circle Moodle to share documents and expand the discussions from learning circle sessions. 

The Goal of the Digital Literacy Planning Learning Circle

This learning circle focused on strategies to make more visible the digital literacy progress of adult education learners from the classroom, program, and state-level perspectives. A key goal was to help state agency leaders encourage their program providers to learn about student digital skills through digital literacy plans, to monitor how curricula and digital literacy plans are addressing those skills within digital plans, and to adapt their digital literacy plans to reflect the ongoing evolution of student needs and strengths. This strategy leverages responsive evaluation to inform state progress, programing, and classroom instruction. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship among learning about students’ digital skills, monitoring digital literacy plans and how they address students’ digital skills, and adapting digital literacy plans to continuously reflect students’ digital skills. 

Figure 1. How Data about Students’ Digital Skills Digital can Inform Literacy Plans 

Learning Circle Highlights

Session 1: State-Level Approaches to Digital Literacy Planning

SMART Goals

Neda Anasseri from the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network at the Sacramento County Office of Education funded by the California Department of Education introduced California’s Continuous Improvement Plan (CIP) and the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound goals) goal process as a way to support planning and inform program providers’ digital literacy plans. In California, students take a student technology intake survey when they enroll, and this survey helps to inform providers’ SMART goals. The survey asks questions about students’ access to digital devices and home internet, and their current digital skills and learning preferences by modality. This example prompted attendees to consider how such a survey might support goal setting in their contexts and about how to support program providers who might struggle in setting or achieving their goals. 

Digital Literacy Planning in Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) Request for Proposals 

Jamie Harris, formerly from Maryland’s Department of Labor (MD DoL), shared how digital literacy goals were integrated into the state Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) Request for Proposals to support planning and monitoring. For their Fiscal Year 2021 Competitive Grant Applications, MD DoL evaluators considered how programs described instructional activities that utilized technology, implementation of blended and distance learning, and use of the Digital Literacy Framework for Adult Learners to guide digital literacy implementation plans. Programs needed to provide details on 1) how they would launch their plans, 2) leverage them over the grant period, and 3) analyze their implementation. 

During the learning circle session, participants reflected on these examples and discussed their efforts to support not only students’ digital skills but also the important role of instructors’ digital skills in creating implementation plans. 

Session 2: Monitoring Students’ Digital Skills through Measurable Skills Gain Type 4

Participants learned about a strategy for monitoring student digital skills achievement from Sophie Tan with the Rhode Island Department of Education. Sophie presented the strategy of leveraging National Reporting System for Adult Education (NRS) measurable skill gains (MSG) Type 4 to document digital literacy achievements in integrated and education training (IET) and workplace literacy programs. Commonly referred to as progress toward milestones, MSG Type 4 is defined by the NRS as “satisfactory or better progress report, toward established milestones, such as completion of on-the-job training or completion of 1 year of an apprenticeship program or similar milestones, from an employer or training provider who is providing training.” 

Rhode Island adult educator Kim Libby introduced the Providence Public Library’s IET program on Microsoft Excel for English Language Learners. Students in this program can demonstrate an NRS MSG Type 4 by either completing a capstone project and/or achieving an agreed upon list of Northstar Digital Literacy Assessments. As part of the process of developing the IET program, the Providence Public Library team collaborated with employer partners to define meaningful measures of progress toward employment in the target occupational sector. Employer partners gave feedback on elements of the capstone project and on the specific Northstar assessments that would be most relevant for employment. 

Attendees discussed how they might measure progress in digital skills, especially as it pertains to building workforce preparation skills. The presenters provided an example of this. RI state staff shared their experience exploring the use of the Northstar Digital Literacy Assessment to document MSG Type 4. In the end, RI staff determined that just including one digital skill assessment from the Northstar suite of assessments would not be robust enough to count for MSG Type 4. Instead, they decided that a predetermined set of digital skills assessments be considered for one progress report, and that this selection must be in coordination with employers to ensure that this is a meaningful measure of progress. 

Session 3: Learning about Students’ Digital Skills 

Sandy Goodman, from World Education, led a discussion around their work on the Boston Digital Literacy Initiative. This conversation focused on learning about students’ digital skills through digital needs assessments and the process of building action plans through coaching. Needs assessment requires providers to reflect on their current use and capacity to use technology in their programs, including support for staff and for students. Coaches encouraged providers to prioritize their programs’ digital needs and develop action plans based on the results of their digital needs assessments. Integrating technology into instruction  emerged as a common goal across the participating Boston adult education programs. In response, coaches guided program teams through the process of developing EdTech Routines. Many learning circle attendees mentioned that they were in the beginning stages of developing similar processes of needs assessments and action plans. 

What We Learned 

The Digital Literacy Plans Learning Circle featured experienced presenters who shared how they had capture and aligned their planning processes  with their students –  and staff’s – digital skills through varied promising approaches, including: 

• learning about digital skills and needs, 
• monitoring if those digital skills and needs were addressed through current programming, and
• adapting plans to ensure ongoing alignment with students’ digital skills needs.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital literacy planning; instead, this learning circle provided a space to share and to consider how these digital literacy planning processes in California, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Boston can shape and support others who are undertaking these efforts. 

What’s next?

As we completed this learning circle, many IDEAL members were in the process of creating their digital literacy plans, and considering how to incorporate the ideas from the learning circles into their efforts. This learning circle has already led to an additional effort to explore digital literacy planning. At the open conference on digital education entitled IDEAL EdTech Innovations, there will be a dedicated lightning talk to address how digital skills are integrated and measured in Integrated Education and Training programs. This lightning talk, Digital Skills in IET Design, will build on Rhode Island’s discussion (session 2) about how to utilize MSG Type 4 and plan for digital skills in their IET programs. 

IDEAL Consortium is open to any state. If you are an edtech or professional development leader in your state, we invite you to explore membership for your state to be part of this dynamic and forward-thinking community. Any educator can join our monthly EdTech Strategy Session webinars. 

Read about other Learning Circles: Artificial Intelligence, HyFlex