PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Alaska School Broadband Audit is a comprehensive study of the broadband connectivity and related technology available to students and teachers in Alaska’s public schools. This project is the first of its kind intended to provide educators, policymakers, and parents essential insights on the connectivity gaps affecting K-12 institutions. Broadband technology in schools is increasingly relevant to educating Alaska’s youth and providing access to vibrant learning tools.


The audit was conducted by Connect Alaska and funded through the State Broadband Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration.


The Alaska School Broadband Audit commenced in summer 2014 and established ambitious goals to collect broadband connectivity and capacity of each and every one of the 506 K-12 schools in the 53 Alaska school districts. By April 2015, the project had collected data from 53 school districts with 479 schools having supplied data.

 

The audit consisted of the following activities:

  • Comprehensive data collection from every K-12 public school in Alaska on broadband connectivity, on-campus wireless and wired network capacity, equipment, and district Wide Area Network connectivity.

  • Site visits by network engineers to examine, test, and validate broadband and on-campus connectivity and capacity. By its completion, engineers had visited 53 districts and validated data from each of those districts

  • Administration of a Needs Assessment Survey. The results of the survey summarizes the otucome of 55 one-on-one interviews of school educators and administrators, the majority in rural and bush areas, in which nearly three-quarters of the state’s K-12 schools are located. Interviews were conducted by Hayes Research Group, a research firm based in Anchorage, Alaska.

  • Development of a comprehensive report of findings from the collected data and site visits was released in May 2015.

  • Launch of the data visualization portal. The portal was launched in May 2015 to help educators, the public, and policymakers learn about the broadband gaps for every K-12 public school in the state, including tools to track and benchmark progress against peers and national broadband connectivity targets.