EAH Housing, an affordable housing organization, partnered with the Literacy, Language, and Technology Research group at Portland State University for the digital literacies portion of a digital infrastructure and digital literacies program funded by a grant from the California Public Utilities Commission. Working with the Literacy, Language, and…

As the population ages, more older adults seek learning opportunities in various educational settings. This article highlights the understanding of older adult learners and the greater heterogeneity within this demographic. I explore why and how older adults learn, including their learning needs, the challenges of aging that may affect their…

With the urgency of adult digital skill development as a backdrop, the Digital Resilience in the American Workforce (DRAW) initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), conducted a national landscape scan to identify existing resources and effective approaches for digital skills…

Taking courses by continuing education (CE) providers is one of the main ways for adults to learning digital skills. CE is provided in either face-to-face (F2F) or online distance learning (ODL) mode. While F2F courses are natural and well-understood, ODL is flexible and less expensive. However, ODL lacks the natural teacher-student and…

The current and projected influx of older adult learners over 50 years of age implies the need to revisit lenses in which they are perceived and their academic needs. Though there are several support services to assist with physiological, socioeconomical, emotional, and cognitive hindrances, accessibility to these services continues to be the…

This doctoral research study examined how nontraditional students from different generations experience returning to college to gain insight into their media and technology usage habits and determine how those differences might influence enrollment marketing practices. The study was designed and administered using relationship marketing as a…

Access is often defined in policies oriented to digital inclusion as the potential, if not the means, to access an Internet connection. Using a policy anthropology (Wedel & Feldman, 2005) approach that combines methods of critical policy analysis with an ethnography of adults' learning experiences in a public-access digital café, we argue that…

This article reports on a study of adult literacy and learning in a public computing center where people contend with the new literacy demands of online government and other automated technologies. The study asks, (1) What literacy and learning practices are associated with digital governance? (2) What pedagogies support people to navigate digital…

Adaptive learning technologies hold great promise for improving the reading skills of adults with low literacy, but adults with low literacy skills typically have low computer literacy skills. In order to determine whether adults with low literacy skills would be able to use an intelligent tutoring system for reading comprehension, we adapted a 44…

Student engagement is a prerequisite for successful learning. Due to the tremendous change in the use of information and communication technologies, the nature of this engagement has had to adapt to fit a hybrid approach of teaching and learning. In this qualitative study, three focus group discussions were conducted that aimed to investigate…

Over the past decade, Prensky's distinctions between "digital immigrants" and "digital natives" have been oft-referenced. Much has been written about digital native students as a part of the Net generation or as Millennials. However, little work fully considers the impact of digital immigrant discourse within the fields of…

The European Agenda for Adult Learning defines the focus for European cooperation in adult education policies for 2012-2020. The Agenda highlights the need to increase participation in adult learning of all kinds (formal, non-formal and informal) either to acquire new work skills, or for active citizenship, or for personal development and…

Students in higher institutions need to carry out research projects. The focus of this paper explores a model to help students learn ICT skills needed for research projects. Generally students go through the "long and hard route" to learn and use ICT resources because they do not know how to do it. The paper explores the Adult Learning…

This research explores the difficulties faced by many migrant, refugee, and immigrant adults confronted with technological ubiquity in economically developed countries. Preparing migrant adult learners for the digital world by building digital literacy skills can help to maintain home language proficiency, support English language learning, and…

As traditional classroom settings are transitioning to online environments, teachers now face the challenge of using this medium to promote effective learning strategies, especially when teaching older age groups. Because adult learners bring a different set of understandings and skills to education than younger students, such as more job and life…