East Lansing, July 7, 2025

In response to the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice of June 6, 2025, the Quello Center released a revised and updated version of its framework for the assessment of the effects of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act of 2021 on high-speed Internet access, digital equity, and community development. Bauer, J.M., Mack, E., Nam, A., Lee, Boram, & Knittel, M. Assessing the Effects of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on High-Speed Internet Access, Digital Equity, and Community Development. Revised and Updated, East Lansing, Michigan: Quello Center at Michigan State University, July 7, 2025.

The Center also put together a checklist for State Broadband Offices (SBOs) on the minimum data needed for the effective monitoring and evaluation of the BEAD infrastructure deployment program. Quello Center. Data Requirements for the Effective Evaluation of the Restructured BEAD Program. A Guide and Checklist for Practitioners. East Lansing, Michigan: Quello Center at Michigan State University, July 7, 2025.

East Lansing, June 2025. In a new, peer reviewed publication, Quello Center researchers Gabriel Hales and Keith Hampton argue that it’s time to rethink the conventional moral panic surrounding screen time and academic achievement. The prevailing focus on displacement effects tells only half the story. The authors demonstrate how adolescents’ casual engagement with social media, video games, and other digital leisure activities cultivates broader digital skills. These skills are positively associated with substantially higher standardized test scores on the SAT in reading and writing, and a smaller, yet significant, boost in math. However, gender-based media preferences—with boys favoring video games and girls tending towards social media—lead to unequal benefits from these digital engagements. While digital skills developed through these activities can narrow the reading and writing achievement gap between boys and girls on the SAT, girls experience fewer benefits in closing the math achievement gap. There is a real danger that trends prioritizing structured, adult-supervised, overtly educational activities at the expense of unstructured leisure time both on and offline are doing more harm than good. We must shift research, policy, and parenting practices  to recognize the profound benefits of casual leisure (both online and offline) for adolescent well-being and development.

The paper can be downloaded or read here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2516542

On April 18, 2025 at 10 AM EDT, we hosted a talk on (Re)Working AI: Designing Workplace Technologies with and for Labor with Sarah Fox, Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

More information HERE

April 14, 2025 at 12 PM EDT, we hosted a talk on Full Stack AI Governance with Robert Gorwa, WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Michael Veale, University College London.

Every time someone trains, deploys, or queries an ‘artificial intelligence’ system, whether they know it or not, they are implicating the practices and services of an enormous number of interlinked businesses in the AI ‘stack’.  In this talk, Robert Gorwa and Michael Veale will present early findings from their ongoing book project on emerging public-private regulatory practices emerging across this stack, focusing on what does, could, and should be done to prevent very real emergent forms of AI misuse. As more obligations and responsibilities are foisted on or taken up by the various intermediaries that facilitate access to AI systems (e.g. cloud providers, model hosts, internet infrastructure providers), the talk will introduce some of the extremely tricky tensions relating to technological control, generativity, analytic capacity, and privacy that lay ahead.

 

 

 

On April 4, 2025, the Internet Governance Project (IGP) in collaboration with the Quello Center gathered scholars of differing views to debate what digital sovereignty means, how it is being used as a label, and whether the various interpretations of the term are compatible with the foundational values of the open internet.

The five panelists engaged in a spirited and controversial debate. If you missed it, please check out the video at: https://youtu.be/e-y1Iz7eXVE?si=JuiLVwySnlFuBdz5.

East Lansing, October 25, 2024

Supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts Broadband Access Initiative, this report develops a framework for the assessment of the effects of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act of 2021 on high-speed Internet access, digital equity, and community development. With the funding authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 2021 (Infrastructure Act), the federal government, states, and communities will have a window of opportunity to close digital connectivity gaps improve digital equity, and to transform communities. The scale and diversity of current federal, state, and local policy initiatives creates a needs transparency and accountability to assure the responsible use of public funds.

Even though the Infrastructure Act and NTIA implementation guidelines supply an integrative framework, states and territories have developed varying models to meet their specific needs. Given the many challenges of such a large-scale effort, it is to be expected that some will be more effective than others. If properly monitored and evaluated, these variations can be translated into knowledge that can help improve all programs for the remaining duration of the program. The first report from the project, released today, develops principles to ease the burden on eligible entities of meeting their statutory reporting requirements and to guide data collection, program monitoring, and impact evaluation going forward.

For more information see quello.msu.edu/iija-assessment

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: Tuesday, September 10, 2024

After two years, Project MOON-Light, a network-wide, significant upgrade of Michigan’s middle mile Internet infrastructure, was completed. MOON-Light is a collaboration between Michigan State University, Merit Network, and the Quello Center. It was supported in part by a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Infrastructure Program. The enhanced middle mile capabilities will enable local internet service providers to connect residents and businesses in unserved areas of the state and improve the quality of service to areas that are currently served by lower access speed and quality of service. Representatives from the Quello Center, Michigan State University, Merit Network, NTIA, Merit Network member organizations, and internet service providers, celebrated the completion of the project with an event at Michigan State University.

 

The recording of our live-streamed the event  can be watched here: https://hubs.la/Q02PcqlQ0

East Lansing, MI – August 22, 2023. This study was designed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on home Internet connectivity, student achievement, and adolescent well-being. The focus is on middle and high school students enrolled in rural and small-town schools.

It builds on the findings of a study on Broadband and Student Performance Gaps released in the weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Hampton et al., 2020). That report highlighted the low levels of broadband access by rural Michigan students and the detrimental impact from a lack of access on their academic performance, educational aspirations, career choices, and general well-being. In 2022, we returned to the same schools that we first surveyed in 2019. We asked students about their experience with Internet technologies and with learning from home during the pandemic. Our findings paint a picture of how rural school districts and other stakeholders rapidly mobilized to address a national crisis. In a remarkably short period of time, schools accessed state and federal resources to close gaps in rural Internet access and computing devices.

More information.

Download

East Lansing, MI – February 24, 2023. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA) and the Digital Equity Act of 2021 (DEA) establish a broad framework and significant funding to advance broadband connectivity and digital equity. Both Acts recognize that closing the broadband access and device gaps are necessary first steps toward digital equity. To fully realize the full benefits of digital technology for individuals, communities, and society at large additional efforts are needed.

The Digital Opportunities Compass offers a framework to assist in the development of state plans that meet the reporting and assessment requirements of IIJA and DEA but go beyond access and affordability to fully harness the benefits of digital technology. As communities and states develop plans to improve digital equity, it is important to establish a shared framework to establish goals and priorities, to identify opportunities, and monitor progress toward these goals.