Ongoing Research

Assessing the Effects of the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act on High-Speed Internet Access, Digital Equity, and Community Development

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.

Project Timeline: Phase I—March-September 2024; Phase II—October 2024-June 2025

Research Team: Johannes M. Bauer, Elizabeth Mack, Keith Hampton, Megan Knittel, Angie Nam, Dhimaan Bhattacharya, Umair Tajin

More information: https://quello.msu.edu/iija-assessment/

Broadband and Student Performance Gaps

Broadband and Student Performance Gaps is the result of a project designed to understand the repercussions of poor or no home Internet access on student performance and the associated costs to society. The Quello Center at Michigan State University (MSU) and Merit Network, in December 2018, brought together the K12 Citizen Science Working Group, a small group of stakeholders from Michigan school districts.

Research Team: Keith N. Hampton (MSU), Laleah H. Fernandez (MSU), Craig T. Robertson (Oxford), Johannes M. Bauer (MSU)

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Rural Digital Inequities in Educational Attainment, Student Performance, and Psychological Wellbeing

This project studies the role of digital inequality on change in rural student’s academic performance, educational aspirations, and psychological wellbeing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing existing survey and student record data from a 2019 sample of rural students will be paired with student records from standardized exams (2019-2022), and information on student internet during the pandemic. This work will answer the question of whether students with no or poor Internet access, and those with lower digital skills, experienced declines in academic performance, educational aspirations, or psychological wellbeing? And if initiatives by schools to “fill the gap” in the missing infrastructure for rural Internet access (e.g., deploying cell phone hotspots) was successful at preventing negative consequences to student performance, educational aspirations, and psychological wellbeing due to preexisting digital inequalities?

Research Team: Keith N. Hampton (MSU), Gabriel Hales (MSU), Megan Knittel (MSU), Johannes M. Bauer (MSU)

Human-Centered Infrastructure Design and the Future of Rural Digital Connectivity

This study by Jean Hardy, Director of the Rural Computing Research Consortium (RCRC) and Research Fellow at the Quello Center, seeks to answer the following: First, what are the localized, and often invisible, connectivity needs of rural people? Second, how do we design infrastructure so that it better serves rural connectivity from a rural perspective? To address this gap in understanding, the project draws from the decades-long legacy of human-centered design and participatory design that advocates for end users being at the center of the design of digital technology. In doing so, we take what we are calling a human-centered infrastructure design (HCID) approach. This approach involves combining ethnographic methods that seek to understand the cultural and lived experience of digital connectivity on the ground with design methods that seek to understand how infrastructure could be designed differently if we centered rural connectivity needs from the beginning of the design process.

Research Team: Jean Hardy (MSU), Ava Francesca Battocchio (MSU), Johannes M. Bauer (MSU)

Digital Innovation Policy

This multi-year research initiative seeks to inform policies toward advanced ICT service and applications in the United States, with a current emphasis on 5G wireless services, platform ecosystems, and systemic types of innovation (e.g., smart mobility). Many of the topics addressed will also apply to emergent technologies, including 6G and sub-THz services as well as the Internet of Intelligence (IoI).

Research team: Johannes M. Bauer (Quello Center, MSU); Tiago S. Prado (Quello Center, MSU); Steven S. Wildman (former Quello Center, MSU).

Political and Health Information Seeking

This collaborative project seeks to understand political and health information seeking during periods of dynamic change, such as the unfolding Coronavirus pandemic. Controlling for socioeconomic and other factors, we are particularly interested in how sources and channels used to obtain, verify, and update information influence individuals’ mental models and factual knowledge about the pandemic and appropriate responses.

Research Team: Johannes M. Bauer (MSU), Bianca C. Reisdorf (UNCC),  Grant Blank (Oxford), Shelia R. Cotton (Clemson), Anna Argyris (MSU), Craig T. Robertson (Oxford), Megan Knittel (MSU), Young Anna Argyris (MSU), and Aziz Muqaddam (University of San Diego)