The rural broadband community has a new ally in Merit Network of Michigan. Merit Network is a non-profit network that is governed by Michigan’s public universities. The organizations was founded in 1966 and was an early player that helped to develop some of the practice and protocols still used on the Internet. Their early mission was to seek ways for universities to network together, something that they accomplished by connecting Michigan and Michigan State in 1971. Merit went on to manage NSFNET, a nationwide network sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that was used to connect advance research labs and universities.
Over time, the company also collaborated with the Internet 2 project but also turned its attention to Michigan where it cobbled together a network comprised or owned and leased fibers used to provide bandwidth to K-12 schools around the state.
In the last year, Merit decided to further expand their mission. They now see that the biggest problem in Michigan education is the lack of home broadband for students. 70% of the teachers in Michigan assign computer-based homework, and yet 380,000 homes in Michigan don’t have a broadband connection. They are convinced, like many of us, that this homework gap is creating permanent harm and disadvantaging students without broadband.
The organization recently held their first statewide broadband summit and invited communities, service providers, anchor institutions, and broadband ‘activists’ to attend the summit. I’m pleased to have been invited to be a speaker. The goal of the conference was to describe the homework gap and to talk about real solutions for solving the problem in the state. The summit hoped to bring together stakeholders in rural broadband to form alliances to tackle the problem.
Merit has also taken several extraordinary steps that is going to make them a major player in the national effort to solve the homework gap. They’ve undertaken what they call Michigan Moonshot. This is an intensive effort to map and understand the availability of broadband around the state. The effort is being undertaken in collaboration with M-Lab and the Quello Center of Michigan State University. The concept is to encourage state educators to get students to take a specific speed test and to pair that effort with a program that teaches students about gathering scientific data.
The Moonshot effort is also going to correlate student test scores with broadband availability. This will be done in such a way as to guarantee student anonymity. This has been done before, but not on such a large scale. The project solicited participation from several school districts in Spring 2019 but expects to include many more in the future. The results of the data collection will be analyzed by scientists at Michigan State. The results of Moonshot studies should be of interest to educators and rural broadband proponents all over the country. Preliminary results show that it’s likely that there will be a strong measurable negative impact for students without home broadband. This study will provide peer-reviewed statistical evidence of that impact and should be a useful tool to educate legislators and to goad communities into action to find a broadband solution.
Merit is also nearing completion of a lengthy document they call the Michigan Moonshot Broadband Framework, which they hope will be a living document (meaning that collaborators can make edits) that lays forth a guide for communities that want to find a local broadband solution. This document is a step-by-step roadmap for how a community can tackle the lack of broadband.
It’s always good to have another major player in the national battle to tackle the lack of household broadband. I have high hopes that Merit Network will spur finding broadband solutions for rural and urban students in Michigan.