Paper to Pixels (2014) and Bridging the Digital Divide (2015), realigned university incarcerated student support processes to be more efficient, but also allowed the university to benchmark itself against other Australian universities in regard to the provision of higher education to incarcerated students and other students with unre- liable internet access.
Making the Connection
In the latter half of 2013, the University of Southern Queensland was awarded $4.39 million over 3 years by the Australian Government under the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program for a project titled Making the Connection:
Improving Access to Higher Education for Low Socio-Economic Status Students with ICT Limitations. Beginning in early 2014, the project built on those previous projects led by the university which trialled digital technologies for learning in cor- rectional centres.
Making the Connection builds on From Access to Success by continuing to develop the Offline StudyDesk so that it is robust, repeatable and reliable. One of the findings from the earlier project was that incarcerated students had only a few hours a week to access the correctional centre computer labs. This was because of the competition from other courses and programs, including vocational programs, for space and because students were typically employed in jobs in ‘industries’
within the correctional centre, restricting the time available to study. To help over- come these difficulties in access, the Making the Connection project will be provid- ing notebook computers to participating students so they can take them back to their cells and continue working in their personal time.
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At the moment, the transfer of courses between the university and correctional centres occurs via DVD. In the near future, education officers will be able to down- load courses through a kiosk hosted at USQ and accessed via the administrative network (which is internet-enabled). The version of the Offline StudyDesk is approximately one version behind the main production version to allow for any glitches to be ironed out.
Because incarcerated students have limited access to the computer labs, it was decided that it would be desirable for students to have a personal device that they could take back to their cells. As with the modified learning management system, these devices cannot be used to access the internet. Focus groups with incarcerated students participating in eBook reader trials in a previous project were critical of the small screen size and onscreen keyboard in these devices. Taking this feedback on board, the project team conducted a detailed options analysis of some 32 tablet computers, laptops and notebooks. It was decided that a Windows notebook would be most suitable as it had an almost full-size keyboard and adequate processing power and screen real estate would not be compromised by an onscreen keyboard.
Also, students would be able to use LibreOffice to complete assessments. The proj- ect team have managed to make the Offline StudyDesk stable and reliable on the devices which are currently undergoing security certification in some jurisdictions.
Developing appropriate technologies is only part of the challenge of providing higher education to incarcerated students. Appropriate courses and programs had to be adapted for use with the technologies and use without access to the internet.
Taking into account the levels of previous academic achievement in the correctional centres and jurisdictional sensitivities around students accruing Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) debt, there is a focus on the courses of the Tertiary Preparation Program and Indigenous Higher Education Pathways Program, both Commonwealth-funded enabling programs that are supplemented by three diploma programs: the Diploma of Arts (Social Sciences), Diploma of Science (Environment and Sustainability) and Diploma of Business Administration.
Developing offline technologies is only part of the challenge of providing higher education to incarcerated students. Courses and programs have to be modified to function well in the offline context. A number of factors were taken into consider- ation when choosing programs for modification. The primary consideration was the likely previous academic achievements and experiences of the students. Many incarcerated students are from low socio-economic status backgrounds where lower academic achievement is more common. Similarly, low levels of education remain a key part of the ongoing cycle that leads to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system (Weatherburn et al. 2006). As USQ has been providing education to incarcerated students for around 25 years, the project team could access a large amount of data around the programs incarcerated students have typically enrolled in. Sentence length was an important consideration, especially given that around 90% of prisoners are incarcerated for one year or less. The project team also consulted with careers advisors at the university about the careers in which ex-offenders could reasonably expect to be employed, given that they will have a criminal record, and what programs would prepare them for those careers.
C. Lee et al.
The project team consulted with university course examiners (course coordinators), heads of school and executive deans about what courses could reasonably be adapted for delivery in the correctional environment; for example, courses with significant practical or residential components may be unsuitable. It was also established that it would be more beneficial to offer a selection of courses across a range of disci- plines, rather than concentrate course modification efforts around one discipline as would be necessary with a degree program.
Jurisdictional administrators expressed concern about the potential for incarcer- ated students to acquire a significant HECS debt. They worked closely with the project team to ensure that HECS debts would be kept to a minimum and provide the best outcomes for prisoners. Taking into account the levels of previous academic achievement in the correctional centres and jurisdictional sensitivities around stu- dents accruing HECS debt, there was also a focus on the enabling or bridging courses, specifically the Tertiary Preparation Program and the Indigenous Higher Education Pathways Program, both of which are Commonwealth-funded enabling programs. These programs articulate into a number of undergraduate programs at USQ. In correctional centres, they articulate into three diploma programs: Diploma of Arts (Social Sciences), Diploma of Science (Environment and Sustainability) and Diploma of Business Administration. Diploma programs were selected in acknowl- edgement of the typically short sentence length of most prisoners.
The Indigenous Higher Education Pathways Program is of particular importance to this project given the overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in correctional centres. The program has run for a number of years at the university out of the unit now called the Centre for Indigenous Studies, Education and Research (formerly the Centre for Australian Indigenous Knowledges). A key feature of this program has been a residential school at the beginning of the semester where students can meet their lecturers and each other before returning home to continue their studies, and students who are not incarcerated still participate in that residential school. As part of the Making the Connection project, the program has been developed for online and offline delivery. To make up for the fact that incarcerated students cannot attend the residential school, the program has been designed to incorporate a large amount of multimedia materials and interactivity. So far three courses have been redeveloped for deployment on the offline technologies. These are: ISE7001 Talking the Talk: Claiming your Voice within Academia; ISE7002 Learning the Lingo:
Academic Writing; and ISE7003 Keeping on Track: Study Skills. Three more courses will be developed for delivery in Semester 2 2016. These will be ISE7004 Mathematics, as Storytelling; ISE7005 Walking the Walk: Applying Academic Skills;
and ISE7006 Academic Conventions and Indigenous Research Methodologies.
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