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LEARNING CONNECTIONS:
Basic Skills and Post-Secondary Pathways
for At-Risk Adult Learners
Basic skills education for youth and adults is crucial to a robust pipeline leading to post-secondary education. Without the foundation of basic skills, neither access to nor success in higher education - or, for that matter, in employment or other aspects of adult life - is possible for the estimated 40 million illiterate and low-literate adults nationwide.
With the support of Lumina Foundation for Education, the National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL) will help address this social and economic challenge through an initiative called Learning Connections. NCAL will bring to bear its more than two decades of experience with the use of information technologies (IT) in adult basic skills education, to promote improved learner knowledge about, and motivation to pursue, pathways to success.
Learner motivation and success depends, research suggests, on tailored knowledge of present and future opportunities, what we call pathways to success. In other words, those who have dropped out of the secondary school system, and/or are in a program such as GED or vocational training, are often in need of knowledge about how best to invest themselves in their own futures. Adults - both learners and the educators and advisors who support them - need ways to identify and navigate the array of opportunities and service providers available to them, as well as to understand their own progress and achievements.
Through Learning Connections , NCAL will create and pilot a web-based platform to facilitate individualized self-advising as both a motivational and directional tool, offering career advice and encouraging basic and post-secondary education. This web-based platform will be accessible to low-literate learners and will offer goal-setting and self-assessment tools to help learners identify immediate and mid-range skill-building needs, and will offer referrals to on-line and local service providers. On-line progress tracking tools and instant-feedback rewards will assist learners as they pursue customized pathways to careers and post-secondary education.
The interface will draw on some existing networks and resources, but it will be distinctive in its focus on primarily IT-assisted programs and will provide more detailed and customized information on pathways between and among programs to help learners envision a trajectory of progress toward personalized objectives. It will also be useful for professional advising staff at community colleges and basic education programs, helping them to become better informed of the pathways available to the learners they advise.
By providing a flexible, context-sensitive tool to help learners identify pathways and potential outcomes, Learning Connections will help individual learners aspire beyond basic skills, and will empower them to make their own choices and understand the impact of those choices on career and educational aspirations and opportunities.
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