KU Center for Digital Inclusion
The Center for Digital Inclusion facilitates scholarship, education and collaborative partnerships aimed at enhancing citizens’ digital access and information literacy, especially among underserved populations, and supporting them to engage in social, economic, political and cultural activities.
Our work
The RETURN Project
Learn more about the RETURN project (digital skills training for justice-involved women), which is led by a team of professors, graduate/undergraduate students and staff at KU (Principal Investigator: Professor Hyunjin Seo). The team received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Kansas Health Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Google to offer technology education for women transitioning from incarceration.
Research
The CDI team's research studies based on empirical data have been published in leading academic journals including New Media & Society, Journal of Communication, ACM Transactions on Computing Education, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Information, Communication & Society, and more. Check out our list of research to get acquainted with our work.
Our Team
Meet our team of professors, graduate students, undergraduate students and staff who conduct community-based research and provide evidence-based technology education for marginalized populations.
What does the Center do?
- Serves as a research and information hub for digital inclusion initiatives at local, national and international levels
- Works with nonprofit organizations, state and federal institutions and industry to enhance citizens’ health and wellbeing by offering hands-on digital and information literacy courses to people they serve (example topics: accessing and evaluating health and financial information, online social networking, and cybersecurity/privacy, etc.)
- Educates undergraduate and graduate students to serve as “Digital Inclusion Ambassadors,” sharing expertise and experience with digital technologies with underserved populations
- Provides engaged scholarship opportunities for faculty and students
- Collaborates with other local, national and international centers working to address the information needs and challenges of underserved populations
Project Video
Watch the story of our Center and our ongoing/future projects to provide technology education for marginalized populations.