Why Edovo Should Partner with Incarcerated Authors to Build Openly Licensed, Custodial-Context Courses

Edovo already has a market-leading presence inside correctional education systems; that reach is a strategic asset that can be leveraged not just to deliver content, but to co-create it with the people who know the custodial context best. By partnering with incarcerated individuals—working through custodial agency educational administrators—to design and implement openly licensed courses that address the realities of life behind bars, Edovo would multiply the relevance, impact, and sustainability of its offerings. This approach places lived experience at the center of instructional design, uses open licensing to accelerate adoption and adaptation, and fills two important content gaps at once: foundational cognitive-behavioral primers that prepare learners for clinical CBI work, and practical digital-literacy courses customized for the devices and apps people in custody actually use.

Authentic relevance is the single biggest driver of adult learning engagement in constrained environments. Content written by people who have lived the custodial experience speaks in the right voice, surfaces the right scenarios, and anticipates the small but consequential constraints—such as limited session times, restricted device capabilities, or institutional rules—that outside authors often miss. When incarcerated learners recognize their own language, dilemmas, and institutions in course materials, they are more likely to enroll, to persist, and to transfer what they learn into everyday choices. Beyond immediate pedagogical gains, authoring content offers the incarcerated contributors real rehabilitative value: it builds vocational skills in writing and curriculum planning, reinforces mastery through teaching, fosters a sense of purpose, and creates portfolio pieces or certificates that can be useful at reentry.

Open licensing multiplies those benefits. Releasing courses under an open license clarifies legal reuse, invites jurisdictional adaptation, and eliminates redundant work across facilities and states. An openly licensed CBI primer created with incarcerated co-authors can be translated, re-scoped, and localized by other custodial education teams without the friction of permission requests or opaque copyright negotiations. That openness also creates a public record of quality and transparency that funders and policymakers increasingly demand, and it makes it feasible for research partners and non-profits to evaluate, adapt, and scale successful modules. For Edovo, openly licensed materials would position the company as both a platform and a steward of a community-driven corpus of custodial learning—an outcome that strengthens mission alignment and long-term value.

Courses that focus on topics unavailable elsewhere, or that must be adapted heavily for custodial realities, are especially ripe for this model. Take the case of a short series of courses that introduce the basic concepts underlying cognitive behavioral interventions: perception, thought, feeling, and behavior. These are not therapy sessions; they are foundational primers designed to give every learner a shared vocabulary and safe practice space so that later, more advanced CBI courses or facilitated group work can be effective. When these primers are co-authored by incarcerated people, the examples, metaphors, and practice situations will be custodial-specific: how perceptions of staff behavior influence feelings in the chow hall, how constrained choices shape habitual responses in cellblock interactions, and how small, safe behavioral experiments might look where freedom of movement is limited. Those contextualized examples lower cognitive load, reduce the gap between abstract theory and lived practice, and create an evidence-based pathway that prepares learners for clinician-led interventions.

Similarly, a series of beginner digital literacy courses—focused on the precise features and workflows of the Android devices and limited-function apps available in many correctional settings—addresses an urgent, pragmatic need. Generic “digital literacy” content is often written for full-featured consumer phones and unconstrained internet access; that mismatch wastes learners’ time and undermines motivation. When people in custody co-design lessons on Android gestures, the meaning of “activities” in their particular device build, or the way their institution’s launcher and notification policies work, the result is usable instruction. Those lessons can include device-accurate screenshots, step-by-step exercises that fit allowed session lengths, and troubleshooting tips for the quirks that only insiders notice. The immediate benefits are better digital competence and lower frustration, and the downstream benefits include improved access to reentry resources, higher employability post-release, and fewer rule violations caused by confusion over device features.

Ethics, Safety, and Quality—Baked In From the Start

Co-creation in custody must be ethical and safe. Partnering through educational administrators ensures consent and clarity about credit, compensation within policy, and boundaries of authorship. Drafts can move through a transparent review process that checks for policy compliance, accuracy, and accessibility, including plain-language reading levels and multilingual support where appropriate. Editorial standards should require neutral, non-stigmatizing language and provide “opt-out” alternatives for potentially sensitive reflections.

Open licensing complements these safeguards. Because revisions are permitted, issues discovered during pilots can be corrected immediately, and improvements can propagate across facilities without contractual friction. Quality thus becomes a continuous practice rather than a quarterly event.

Implementation, Step by Step

The pathway is straightforward. Edovo and participating agencies recruit inside co-authors and facilitators, setting expectations and supports. Short design sprints translate lived experience into prototype lessons, which are piloted in a small cohort and iterated based on learner analytics and facilitator feedback. Once the course meets agreed standards, it is released under an open license, with a version history and a process for local adaptations to be contributed back. Over time, a community of practice emerges: inside authors, educators, and administrators refining materials together, while Edovo curates and stewards the shared catalog.

What Success Looks Like

Success will show up in quieter, more attentive classrooms where examples feel familiar rather than foreign. It will show up in higher completion rates for advanced CBI because learners have mastered the conceptual prerequisites. It will show up when a person transfers across the state and continues a digital literacy module without missing a beat, because both facilities rely on the same openly licensed course adapted to their devices. It will show up after release, when the same person recognizes Android patterns at a workforce center and starts a job application independently.

These are not abstract benefits; they are the practical outcomes of building with, not for. Edovo’s market-leading reach makes it uniquely positioned to convene this effort, while open licensing ensures that every hour invested by inside authors, staff, and facilitators becomes a durable public good. The result is a virtuous cycle: more relevance, more adaptation, more continuity, and more dignity—one openly licensed, co-created course at a time.

A Call to Co-Create

Now is the moment to formalize this partnership model. Invite incarcerated learners and educational administrators to the design table. Commit to open licenses that honor their contributions and maximize reuse. Start with the foundational CBI concepts and the device-matched digital literacy series, then expand to other gaps that only this community can fill. With intentional co-creation and openness at the core, Edovo can convert reach into shared authorship—and shared authorship into better outcomes.