Making the connection: Allowing access to digital higher education in a correctional environment

Type of content
Conference Contributions - Published
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Date
2019
Authors
Macdonald J
Hopkins S
Dove S
Abraham C
Cox J
Seymour S
Lee C
Patching L
Farley, Helen
Abstract

In most Australian correctional jurisdictions, prisoners are not allowed access to the internet precluding them from participating in higher education online. This paper reports on an Australian government-funded project, Making the Connection, which is taking digital technologies, that don't require internet access, into correctional centres to enable prisoners to enroll in a suite of pre-tertiary and undergraduate programs. A version of the University of Southern Queensland's learning management system has been installed onto the education server of participating correctional centres. The second stage of the project will see notebook computers preloaded with course materials, allocated to participating prisoners. At the time of writing, the project has been deployed at eight correctional centres in Queensland and Western Australia, with negotiations underway for further rollout to Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. It is expected that the technologies and processes developed for this project will enable the delivery of higher education to other cohorts without access to reliable internet access.

Description
Citation
Farley H, Macdonald J, Hopkins S, Dove S, Abraham C, Cox J, Seymour S, Lee C, Patching L (2019). Making the connection: Allowing access to digital higher education in a correctional environment. ASCILITE 2015 - Australasian Society for Computers in Learning and Tertiary Education, Conference Proceedings. 434-439.
Keywords
correctional education, ditigal inclusion, digital divide, higher education, digital equity
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ANZSRC fields of research
Fields of Research::39 - Education::3903 - Education systems::390303 - Higher education
Fields of Research::44 - Human society::4402 - Criminology::440202 - Correctional theory, offender treatment and rehabilitation
Fields of Research::46 - Information and computing sciences::4608 - Human-centred computing::460801 - Accessible computing
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All rights reserved unless otherwise stated