Digital Resilience in the American Workforce: Instructional Approaches and Practices

While the Digital Resilience in the American Workforce (DRAW) landscape scan showed that the teaching of digital skills has increased since the onset of the pandemic, it also showed that there still is great need for a more strategic approach. This brief responds to questions raised in interviews with learners and practitioners about how educators can best support adult learners in developing the digital skills required to secure a better future for themselves. We presents promising resources and approaches gleaned from the landscape scan in four main sections:

1. Instructional Approaches, Models, and Practices;
2. Integrating Digital Literacy into Skills Instruction, with examples from different contexts;
3. Meeting the Diverse Needs of Learners, with discussion of some different learner audiences and how to best support each of them; and
4. Gaps, Barriers, and Opportunities to Effective Instructional Approaches and Practices. We share observations from research literature, observations about teaching, and learnings drawn from our interviews and questionnaires.

This report was created by Jobs for the Future and World Education and as part of the DRAW project funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career and Technical Education, Division of Adult Education and Literacy.