2016 Annual Conference

In an increasingly networked world, the notion of a digital divide is critically important to Black men in America. This session explores the role adult educators can play in assisting Black men to overcome the challenges faced in accessing and using digital technology and acquiring appropriate skills.

This session should be of interest to adult educators, administrators, instructors, community-based organizations and others interested to asses Black men to close the digital divide that exists between Black men and other demographic groups in the U.S.

In this session, we use available national and international survey data, investigatory studies, and other literature to address four questions:
1) What motivates Black men to access and use digital technology? Because digital technology is ubiquitous, people can be motivated to engage it or to avoid and distance themselves from its effects.
2) How does physical and material access to digital technology differ for Black men? For economically challenged Black men, the costs of affording the Internet could place the ownership of an Internet-connected computer out of reach (Beckles, 1997).
3) What is the level and extent of digital technology usage of Black men? The concepts of “level” and “extent” of digital technology usage are defined by several parameters, e.g., the usage time and frequency of applications; number and diversity of usage applications; and others (van Dijk, 2012).
4) What are the digital skills of Black men? Information and strategic digital skill sets refer to the capacity to work with hardware and software to search, select, and process information in computer network services (van Dijk, 2012).
Using different interventions, adult education can play an important role in helping low-income Black men succeed in their workplaces, communities, and personal lives.