Harnessing the power of technology for promoting personal growth and active citizenship among public High School women students in Mexico

• In Event: Activism, Education, and Technology: Empowering Women and Youth in Latin America

Proposal

Contrary to widespread hopes, the massive rise in technology use for educational purposes since the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted, among others, in widened social exclusion and inequality, lower levels of achievement, and soaring mental and socioemotional problems among children and youth in many parts of the world. Most available explanations of these disappointing results rightly identify the haste in its adoption ushered by the health crisis, as well as the lack of systematic attention awarded to developing strategies for ameliorating its negative effects on inequality, learning, emotional health and social interaction. In this paper, we report our analysis and findings on an extracurricular online program for young female students in Mexico (Talentum Mujeres Civitas TMC) aimed at strengthening civic competencies and socioemotional skills. To account for the unusually high levels of program graduation in TMC (65%, on the last edition) compared with online learner-centric programs (average, around 36%), generally, and online programs in particular (around 15%), as well as for the significant learning gains and overall strengthening of sense of wellbeing observed in the majority of participants, we highlight the critical importance of two factors. First, an instructional design centered upon proactively addressing underlying social and gender inequalities. Second, an internal communication model focused on providing regular opportunities for personal connections among participants, tutors and instructors. Our findings suggest that connected technologies can positively contribute to enhanced learning, social inclusion and gender equity when program design intentionally and systematically incorporates strategies specifically aimed at equalizing learning opportunities, on the one hand, and on promoting safety and trust-building as the basis for frequent personalized interaction among participants, on the other.
The topic of our paper is directly relevant to the theme of the CIES 2025, Envisioning Education in a Digital Society, as it reports on the design, implementation and results of an extracurricular online personal growth and civic applied-research intervention for Mexican public High School students. The need that our paper addresses in relation to connected technologies in education is also germane to CIES 2025, since it identifies certain program components that appear to very promising in helping reduce the adverse effects and expand the benefits of technology in education on learning outcomes, social inclusion, wellbeing and gender equality. Our paper uses qualitative and quantitative data from Talentum Mujeres Civitas 2024 to report on students’ attendance, participation, and learning gains in both socioemotional skills and civic competencies. In addition, we employ a guiding analytical framework premised on the centrality of equity sensitive instruction and regular personalized interaction as key elements in promoting whole-person growth and learning among youth populations marked by multiple social and cultural disadvantages. Our main findings suggest that the program design elements and the intervention’s components that most contributed to TMC’s success are the following:
1. Detailed planning for addressing known inequalities and risks. For instance, scheduling of tutoring sessions that explicitly considers students’ varying time commitments (school and non-school related) so as to insure that all of them can attend them live; allowing participants to attend a portion of plenary sessions asynchronically so as to accommodate their differing time needs; technological design oriented to minimize data consumption; pedagogical strategies aimed at equalizing learning conditions via ex-ante provision of required contextual knowledge; as well as regular personalized communication between students and staff to address questions and doubts. This model has also allowed TMC to expand the potential benefits of online learning. In particular, widening access to high quality extracurricular programs to disadvantaged population groups traditionally excluded from this type of interventions.
2. Emphasis on personal safety and trust-building activities during the initial sessions also proved valuable in generating the conditions for open and candid communication, as well as for developing connections among students, tutors and instructors. These elements proved especially crucial in allowing for fruitful discussions on sensitive issues related to socioemotional growth such as depression, domestic violence and teenage pregnancy.
3. Personalized peer-tutoring by university students and/or recent university graduates working with small groups of students one session every week. Close interaction with university students, close in age to participants, was especially valuable in allowing students to feel seen and connected. These elements positively influenced their self-esteem, sense of belonging, along with their disposition and motivation to develop a broader set of social, emotional and cognitive skills.
4. Work in teams towards the design and implementation of a strategy to foster civic participation in their communities, guided and supervised by tutors and staff has provided a powerful experience for strengthening participants´ active listening, collaboration, amicable dispute resolution, public speaking skills, as well as a greater sense of efficacy and interest in civic engagement.
5. In person academic sessions at the end of the program for participants with the best performance in the online sessions and activities. This final component has proved valuable in generating incentives for strong performance across participants, while simultaneously offering high achieving students the opportunity for consolidating learning goals and building strong personal networks through face-to-face interaction with peers, tutors and instructors.
6. An Internal communications model that emphasizes personalized communication between students and tutors, staff and instructors has also been very important in limiting the potential adverse effects (e.g., sense of invisibility, social disconnection, loneliness) of purely online educational programs involving large numbers of students.
Our paper also includes information on the process through which the program’s desired outcomes were defined as well as on the methods and techniques employed to both evaluate level of achievement, and identification of the program´s components most likely to explain TMCs observed results in graduation rates, learning gains, and socioemotional skills and wellbeing.

Authors

• Blanca Heredia, Talentum MX

• Jose Enrique Coutiño Trejo, Talentum MX

• José Eduardo Marcos Dehilario, Talentum MX

• Erick Marsan, Talentum MX