RAPID: Education, Work, and Life during COVID-19: Supporting Families at Home with Technology

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In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, American families are rapidly adapting to new conditions that disrupt how we work, perform childcare, and conduct education. Workforce, education, and social experiences are suddenly transformed, as millions of families are forced to take ownership of their children's education while working full-time or enduring hardships of new unemployment. Technology’s role is crucial, as this new social distancing context requires everything outside the family unit to now be performed remotely, over computer networks. This research project will develop understanding of the effects of these extraordinary circumstances on family life, educational outcomes, and work. The research team will investigate how digital technologies offer solutions, negatively impact, and perpetuate or reduce the digital divide and other disparities. To help families mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 on society and the economy, the team will develop guidance—involving technologies in the home—about how to simultaneously support remote education, remote work, and family life. The research team will regularly communicate this guidance through blogging and social media targeted to families, educators, and technology designers.This research will contribute empirical understanding of the experiences of families during COVID-19 social distancing and other times of disruption, in conjunction with computing and information by (1) collecting and analyzing data about how families’ social and educational experiences are transformed by social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) investigating aspects of technology designs that are helpful and unhelpful to families and their relationships to social and economic institutions during COVID-19; (3) designing and discovering new technologies to support work-life balance, education, and family connectedness; and (4) deriving theories and models of how families in a pandemic crisis adapt technologies for distance learning and workforce participation. Thirty diverse families--each with at least one child between the ages of 3 and 13--will be remotely engaged in interviews, surveys, and design activities. The Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) method will be used to collect experiences and co-design new technologies. This method can benefit participants through increased reflection, social support, and resource-sharing. The team will develop new design artifacts based on remote co-design sessions with families. The work will contribute new methodologies, as the researchers adapt the ARC method for use with families with younger children in rapidly evolving situations. The research will be informed by, and potentially extend and further validate theoretical frameworks, including strength of weak ties, joint media engagement, family resilience theory, and funds of knowledge.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.