D iconference keynote_final

Digital Inclusion: Are we nearly there yet?

Professor Jane Seale

TEL Digital Inclusion Consultant

Plymouth University

What has research and practice contributed to our understanding of:

1) The experience and impact of digital exclusion

2) The processes and resources required to promote digital inclusion?

Digital inclusion can be understood as disadvantaged learners being able to:

• Access technologies and the opportunities afforded through these technologies ;

• Use these technologies to access and produce information/content or to communicate and interact with others and in doing so;

• Participate in formal or informal learning activities and opportunities that are;

• empowering in the sense that the learner is able to achieve outcomes that are personally meaningful to them and has an increased range of both personal and socially valued options to choose from

WHAT DOES RESEARCH AND PRACTICE TELL US ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE AND IMPACT OF DIGITAL INCLUSION/EXCLUSION?

Research can identify who is digitally excluded

• Families with school age children• Those with only basic secondary school education• Substance abusers, travellers, domestic violence

sufferers and the youngest children. • Those with mental health problems and children in care• People who have a disability/health related problem

• Although the tendency is to focus on the “headline” data about access to and use of Internet (and not other technologies)

Sources (PWC , 2009; Digital Inclusion Team,2007; OxiS, 2011)

Research can identify reasons for use/non use

• Cost• Lack of interest• Lost access

– finished school; lost job etc.

• Informants tend to be those who have a “voice” that is easy to access…..

Research can identify “access” behaviours

• Valentine et al. 2005– Libraries and Internet cafes did not act as

substitutes for lack of access to ICT at home, because it was children who had access to a computer at home who were also the pupils who accessed ICT most often in other locations out of school.

Research tells us something about impact

• Socio-economic impact• Example: families with school age

children– “[..] if the 1.6 million children who live in families

which do not use the internet got online at home, it could boost their total lifetime earnings by over £10 billion” (PWC, 2009)

Research tells us something about impact (2)

• Educational attainment, confidence and motivation

• Example Valentine et al. 2005– Statistically significant positive association between

pupils’ home use of ICT for educational purposes and improved attainment in mathematics at years 6 and 9,

– Pupils, parents and teachers reported that using ICT raised pupils’ confidence and had “motivational effects”

But we have to use this research data intelligently

Intelligent use of research data

• Value a range of different impacts– Impacting on large groups versus impact on

smaller groups (where the scale of impact may be greater)

– So that what is valued by the minority is measured alongside what is valued by the majority

Intelligent production of research data

• Choose a range of different impact measures – so that impact can be shown across all the

excluded groups • e.g. socio-economic and educational attainment

measures are not necessarily applicable to adults with learning disabilities

– So that outcomes that can show long term gains can be effectively used alongside those that show short terms gains e.g. reduction in re-offending or improving employment• Address the quick fix mentality of many funded DI

projects

But current research only goes so far….

• Lots of good, large-scale survey work – ONS , Ofcom, OII

• But this work rarely produces rich, thick descriptions of “experience”:– how and why people use or not use technologies:

meaningful use• (including but extending beyond the Internet)

– How practitioners support digital inclusion and why some practices are more effective than others: meaningful “best practice”

Practitioners can contribute to this knowledge gap• For example: Helen Milner of UK Online Centres; uses

data on what’s stopping people: (Access, Confidence, Motivation)– To inform what her organisation does – and produces “case studies” to show raised confidence

and motivation

• But there has to be incentives for practitioners to “tell it is how it is”– be critical/evaluative, without fear of losing funding,

contravening government policy

• What practitioner in their right mind would report a failure………….?

WHAT DOES RESEARCH AND PRACTICE TELL US ABOUT THE PROCESSES AND RESOURCES REQUIRED TO PROMOTE DIGITAL INCLUSION?

A Personal Reflection

1987-1993: I worked in “mental handicap” hospitals and adult training centres

We had technology- all hail the BBC Microcomputer!

Going backwards?

• 24 years later…… a private hospital for people with severe learning disability and Autism was highlighted in a 2011 Panorama programme about systematic abuse and torture.

• That modern hospital did not appear to have one single piece of digital technology available for use by the patients – No computers, no Internet, no

mobile phones, No MP3 Players, no iPads, no communication or assistive technology

Those who are not viewed as human, are denied access to the

everyday tools of humanity

Not necessarily, but need certain factors to be in place……

• Let me give you an example….

• Concepts of access: ESRC Seminar Series– People with learning

disabilities participated on an equal basis

– Supported through committed advocacy work

– Included through the use of technology

Included in research through the use of technology, participatory methods & skilled, creative advocacy workers:

• Using mobile phones to organise independent travel to and from the university

• Presenters with learning disabilities able to tell their powerful stories of “access” to non-disabled participants through PowerPoint with pictures and video clips

Included in “life” through the use of technology, & skilled, creative advocacy workers

Life-story work: – digital cameras,

PowerPoint, iTunes enabled people with learning disabilities to control what is said about them in person-centred planning meetings, interviews for care-workers

Self-Advocacy groups:– digital & video cameras to

record visits to heritage sites

– communication tools to produce an accessible report of how well the sites facilitated access

We need to know more about people and processes

So that we can explain why...

• Stuff like this happens….

“The majority of teachers interviewed did not set homework explicitly to be done on a computer because of their concerns about digital divides in terms of children’s access to home-based ICT. Children, however, implicitly absorbed the message that they should use a home computer if they had access to it. As such the digital divide is still there even though teachers did not explicitly set homework using ICT, it was just not acknowledged because pupils were using it out of ‘choice’ rather than under teachers’ direction”

So that we can explain why...

• Stuff like this happens:

“However, Inter-Life, which began in 2009, has uncovered problems some looked-after children have getting online. Despite government action, Internet access is still often unsatisfactory. Researchers have encountered instances of young people eager to join the project who, 10 months after they have been signed up, are still unable to get online. According to Frank: ‘Most children’s homes will let young people on a computer for one hour a day – and it has to be supervised. You cannot get on to many sites as they are all blocked. Technically you have Internet access but it doesn’t amount to anything worth having.’”

Are we nearly there yet?

• No, not quite• But we know more about what we

need to know/do in order to get there!