by Deborah Keyek-Franssen, Ph.D., Associate Vice President and Dean, Online and Continuing Education, University of Utah
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare widespread racial and social inequities in many areas, including health care, housing, employment, incarceration, and policing. We in postsecondary education were not spared this unmasking. Even with our deep expertise in all things learning and education, even with our best of intentions and commitment, the pandemic has revealed and exacerbated inequalities across our sector. Last spring’s precipitous shift to remote learning was disruptive for all students. Combined with persistent inequities, with the extraordinary political and social upheaval in the United States, and with the necessary protests against and significant work to combat systemic racism, that shift to remote was often devastating for our most vulnerable students.
At the same time, we can take hope in the fact that we have learned from this shift and have engaged as never before in practices that promote equity and student success. Organizations such as NASH are at the epicenter of that increased engagement. As we move forward through the spring semester and begin planning for a summer and fall that will not yet be back to normal, we can apply some lessons learned over the last ten months to better serve all our students, including our most vulnerable, whether they be learning in-person, remotely, or fully online. More of us now than ever before can bear witness to the importance of equitable access to digital tools and the Internet, of embracing inclusive design and design justice principles, of student-centric teaching practices. The broadly shared remote learning experiences brought about by pandemic have readied us to transform our teaching and learning enterprises.
Equitable access to digital tools and the Internet should be considered a utility, not a privilege.
The best designed and taught courses, even those taught in-person, are ineffective if students do not have access to reliable hardware, software, and the Internet. The pandemic reminded us that the digital divide is alive and well in our country: when campuses closed, it was blatantly apparent that many of our low-income and rural students often have no home access to the Internet, and few digital tools to access learning materials or classes, save perhaps a smartphone that might not provide unlimited data. In those homes that could afford only one laptop or tablet, those devices were in high demand by siblings and parents who also needed them for school and work. Postsecondary institutions around the country responded by expanding laptop lending programs to meet the needs of students unable to access on-campus resources due to COVID restrictions. In addition to laptops, the University of Utah offered mobile data hotspots with data plans to students, and even to community members taking CARES-funded professional education courses. Such programs must continue, even when our courses are taught primarily in-person again. Robust laptop and data programs provide low-income and rural students reliable access to course materials and the flexibility to take fully online courses to speed their progress toward degree completion. In addition, thought leaders like Tracy Mitrano are urging Congress to make a financial commitment to build out broadband to rural areas across the country, which would benefit all students, including lifelong learners, and could be the cornerstone to an equitable economic recovery.
Equitable design is inclusive, and leads toward justice
For many institutions, the shift to remote learning represented a tremendous “lift-and-shift” of in-person classes to those that relied on video conferencing tools, with few changes to syllabi or practices. Replicating face-to-face practices in a remote modality met with varying degrees of success and underscored the need for purposeful design and for matching practices to modality. Now that faculty new to digital learning have survived the abrupt transition to remote and are taking the next steps toward intentional exploration of design, practices, and tools, we should encourage and support the adoption of inclusive design and even boldly advocate for design justice.
Two resources are helpful and inspirational to experts as well as to those just beginning their equitable design journeys. The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) has created a toolkit and summary overview of inclusive teaching practices, which include ensuring accessibility of materials for students with disabilities, learning and using students’ preferred pronouns, building community among students (always important, even more so during times of enforced isolation), and seeking to learn students’ interests and value their diverse viewpoints. Because they promote community and connection, the importance of these practices to remote and online learning cannot be overstated. In her recent article “Inclusive Design and Design Justice: Strategies to Shape Our Classes and Communities,” Amy Collier takes equitable design to the next logical step, urging us embrace design justice frameworks, which center design around people often marginalized by our educational systems and teaching practices.
Equitable teaching practices consider the student first
The vast majority of us in postsecondary education genuinely care about our students. It’s a small, but important step from that compassion to considering our discrete requirements, expectations, and seemingly neutral practices from the perspective of our most marginalized and vulnerable students. For instance, requiring video cameras be turned on for synchronous classes might seem reasonable, until one realizes that a student might not have a private, quiet room for class, might have competing childcare responsibilities, or might be visually distracted by the many faces in the gallery. As we continue through the next months with remote learning or adapt our courses for a fully online format, we need to design for the very real possibility that students might not have access to tools or broadband. To ameliorate the effects of inequitable access to the Internet, faculty might design for mobile first, reduce the number of mandatory synchronous class sessions, and keep videos short.
Finally, we can use our in-person and virtual classrooms to give students a community and also a respite from the cacophony of the world and the competing demands on their time and attention. In his article Distracted Minds: Your Classroom Can Be a Retreat in Dark Times, James M. Lang suggests that employing a few simple practices, such as giving attention, varying the tempo of classes, and reducing distractions can allow students to focus on their learning, to be renewed, and to be inspired. This would be an invaluable gift, I would argue, even when times are less dark.