DE2

What is DE2?

Centered around the Newfield Central School District in Tompkins County, New York, Digital Equity + Excellence is an organization that advocates for the democratization of technology. Newfield is a racially and ethnically diverse community—the second most diverse district in the county with regard to Black and Multiracial students—and its students face a greater number of obstacles than their peers in surrounding communities, with 21 percent of Newfield students classifying as students with special needs (the Tompkins County average is 15 percent) and 62.9 percent being economically disadvantaged (the Tompkins County average is 39 percent). These factors combined with a lack of accessibility to digital resources and technology contributed to a massive negative impact on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The district was unable to provide students with electronic learning devices; educators found it extremely difficult to lead remote instruction because of a lack of experience with instructional technologies; and most concerning, a large number of families did not even have access to broadband internet service. DE2 aims to address and raise awareness about three immediate necessities that they have identified within the community, which are universal access to broadband, the creation of inclusive, instructionally and technologically rich learning environments, and comprehensive professional development that are focused on antiracism, equity, diversity, accessibility, inclusion, and technology. And while DE2 primarily works within the Newfield Central School District, its broader goals apply to issues that plague rural communities across the country. High speed internet access—otherwise known as “broadband”—is a modern day necessity. The United States’ rural telecommunications infrastructure contains major issues with regard to accessibility and affordability, and there remains a stark digital divide between those with access to broadband, and those without. Members of the second group primarily live in rural areas, and it is also important to recognize the heightened difficulties people living on Tribal lands face in terms of access.  

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Mission Statement:

DE2 wants to generate digital content to advocate for digital social justice and national access to broadband Internet access, specifically for students in rural areas.

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Meet the Team

   

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Our Process:

Our team’s mission was to create valuable resources that greatly benefit school districts, families, and individuals in obtaining internet access, regardless of their financial constraints or familiarity with media campaigns. Our website is designed with a contemporary look and provides easy access to our research and advocacy kits, which are free and easily reproducible. As a large chunk of our stakeholders come from underprivileged towns lacking internet connectivity, we have included resources that can be adapted to any budget and scale. Our research kits are readily available on our website and can be shared beyond the Newfield school district, providing students across the country with opportunities to gain more experience with technology and research practices. Moreover, we created social media posts to encourage advocacy for improved broadband access in Newfield, as well as information regarding the digital divide in the United States. We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to conduct user research at Newfield schools in Newfield, NY, as well as our regular communication with an administrator at Newfield School District. Our team took one trip to Newfield over the course of the semester to interview students and learn about what their experience is like using technology in Newfield. We crafted a set of interview questions before going to the school, and conducted interviews in the school cafeteria. After our interviews, we compiled our session data and pulled significant quotes or experiences to put on our website. We took student feedback into account when deciding which aspects of our deliverables, specifically pertaining to the accessibility of aspects of our website and social media content.

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Hear:

We conducted thorough research to gain a deeper understanding of the digital divide and its impact on students in Newfield. During our partner call, Sunny shared with us real-life stories and statistics from the area, highlighting the challenges faced by the community due to inadequate internet connectivity. Despite multiple requests, ISPs continued to neglect Newfield’s needs, leaving many residents to rely on hotspots for internet access. To aid our understanding, we created a cosmogram and applied Marian’s Tactical frames as a guide. This helped us identify key areas that needed to be addressed to effectively bridge the digital divide. By using these frameworks, we were able to gain a more holistic view of the issue and identify potential avenues for intervention.

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Key Stakeholders

These include the students, families, and community members in rural communities. Additionally, these rural communities are dependent on their local and state legislators to assist in their mission. Members of surrounding communities, potential supporters and donors and anyone who is paying for broadband internet access may play a role in advocacy for reform.

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Innovation

DE2 as an organization requires innovation on cultural, technical, and organizational levels. In crafting solutions to our initial design challenges, our team plans to focus on coming up with innovative and creative solutions on how to get the word out about DE2’s mission, specifically to those who suffer from lack of access to a consistent broadband Internet connection whom we believe to be our most invested stakeholders.

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Create:

Website Redesign

We identified several areas where the previous website design could be enhanced. Although the structure and information architecture remained mostly unchanged, we made significant changes to the overall look and feel to align with DE2’s mission   We first implemented the DE2 website formerly designed in Figma into a fully operative website for use in Squarespace. Our main priority is accessibility, and we hope that our website will remain a space for students both in Newfield and in other rural towns and counties across the country to share their experiences with little to no broadband access in a way that has an emotional pull with DE2 stakeholders. The first thing you see when you enter the DE2 website is a mission statement highlighting the digital divide in America. We are hoping that this significant statistic combined with demographic information will succeed in drawing those who come across the website into the page to learn more. Our landing page is designed to be accessible to all Americans, not just Newfield students. To convey a sense of urgency, we’ve used an impressionist painting generated by DALLE-2, featuring students in a dimly lit classroom. This evocative image adds a touch of pathos and emphasizes the seriousness of the issue. To further highlight the importance of this problem, we’ve included a compelling statistic on the landing page: 44 million Americans lack access to high-speed internet. This data is intended to persuade readers that the digital divide is a significant issue that needs to be addressed urgently. Our goal is to ensure that everyone who visits our website understands the gravity of the situation and is motivated to take action to help bridge the digital divide. Our partner was particularly interested in understanding how this digital divide affected students, which led us to conduct further research. We discovered a significant homework gap between students with reliable internet and those without, with marginalized and rural communities being disproportionately affected. To ensure that our website accurately reflected these key findings, we added these statistics to our research.

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Social Media Content

  One of our major goals for DE2 this semester was to bring awareness to how internet connectivity is affecting not only Newfield but students in the world. Alongside our website, we decided to work on social media posts that can spread DE2’s mission to a bigger audience. First, we wanted to create a post that highlighted what DE2 is to familiarize the audience with their goals and what Newfield is currently facing right now. This would be multiple slides in one post. In the final image, we list our action items that our audience can do to spread awareness. This is also a way to promote our website! After making the initial post on highlighting DE2, we also want to be able to provide facts regarding internet connectivity. We think this would be a great addition to the social media page because it can attract a larger audience that wants to learn more about the issue at hand. Posts like these also highlight the research we did previously. For the next semesters, we hope that the next team will take these templates and add on to it based on research we have done and new research to come. Additionally, we hoped to also highlight testimonials from students at Newfield and hopefully other members of the community who have been affected due to the lack of internet connectivity. As of now, we have been primarily using the Newfield green but hope to add additional colors to diversify the social media!

Deliver

This semester, our team was able to effectively complete the goals laid out to us by our client Sunny Miller. We took the work completed by last semester’s DE2 team to successfully produce and publish an updated, public website highlighting DE2’s mission. The site contains relevant information like a “Letter to Your Senator” printable template, student stories regarding Internet access in rural communities, and information on representation and how minority communities are more heavily impacted by a lack of broadband Internet access. The site is now live at https://de2.squarespace.com.We were also able to successfully produce a series of advertising posts for DE2, that can be published to the social media platforms of their choosing. Sunny Miller will have paid editing access to our website for the next year, at which point she may choose to keep the website running if her organization is able to pay the fee. We are hoping that if Sunny chooses to continue her work with this class, future sections of the course will be able to continue to conduct more research on representation within the context of DE2, as well as take a few more trips out to Newfield to interview younger students for a new perspective.