Planning Phase Grant to Examine the Impact of Tablet-Based Educational Programming on Improved Outcomes and Desistance Signals for Incarcerated Individuals

Key stakeholders—including correctional agencies, courts, employers, and policymakers—lack empirical evidence to assess how best to use digital education to reduce misconduct, enhance skill building, and improve reentry outcomes among incarcerated populations. With a reach that now extends to over half of the incarcerated population in the country, Edovo is uniquely positioned to support large-scale research. Edovo operates the nation’s most extensive secure tablet-based learning platform, delivering free educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programming to over one million incarcerated individuals across 1,100+ correctional facilities. Through this planning grant, a team led by Associate Professor Megan Denver is developing critical research infrastructure to enable the data integration, randomized interventions, and external data linkages necessary to examine if increased access to Edovo tablet-based learning programming and validated transcripts improves in-prison and post-release outcomes.

Project Team:

• Megan Denver, Associate Professor and Director of the Corrections & Reentry Lab

Project Sponsor:

• Arnold Ventures

Outside Collaborators:

• Brian Hill, Co-PI, The Edovo Foundation
• Shawn Bushway, SUNY-Albany and Rand
• Audrey Hickert, University of Cincinnati
• Lou Mariano, Rand