Project Summary

While the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the capabilities of remote home learning with over a billion children displaced from school, the community of Chattanooga, TN, was positioned quite differently. A long history of community-based technology initiatives and local infrastructure allowed a public/private partnership to scale the nation’s most robust community broadband initiative: HCS EdConnect, powered by EPB.

Recognizing this opportunity for research and evaluation, an inter-disciplinary Boston College team is leading efforts to help project stakeholders better capture and analyze the formative and summative impacts of the initiative. Over multiple years, an equity evaluation model employs a variety of data collection efforts undertaken with local partners including surveys, interviews, and secondary analyses of user and system data.

Approach

Using an equity-based framework, this research and evaluation applies an equity lens to all steps of the research and evaluation process. A diverse set of leaders and organizers across the region was recruited to form a Community Advisory Board to inform the broader scope of the evaluation and provide ongoing feedback for aligning recruiting, data collection, and analyses with the perspectives and reality of traditionally disenfranchised community members.

Key Findings

In Spring 2021, a parent survey documenting COVID-era practices and beliefs towards home learning, school, and technology was conducted with a random sample of 416 HCS households. As part of a larger multi-year study, these parent survey results provide an insightful, important, and often overlooked perspective for current and future programs well beyond this study setting:

• Higher percentage of parents with household broadband view digital devices as educational tools rather than entertainments tools than parents without household broadband connections.

• Parents with household broadband connections more frequently use digital devices to communicate with schools and check on students’ homework and grades than parents without household broadband connections.

• Higher percentage of parents with household broadband connections think digital devices have a positive view on students’ reading, math, and social skills and students’ attention span and creativity.

• There are variations in parents’ usage, attitude, and perceptions of using technology and digital device for educational purposes across demographic characteristics such as gender, socioeconomic status, number of children at home, and racial/ethnic identities.
  

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