Abstract:

The digital divide is a familiar term often employed to describe accessibility differences in broadband Internet deployment. While Internet access for postsecondary education students continues to improve, there is a significant new challenge due to the abrupt and unexpected requirement in March of 2020 that most college courses be taught almost entirely online. The resulting situation for some already disadvantaged students is far more challenging than simply a digital divide – it is a digital chasm.

The digital chasm is not about simply sporadic "Wi-Fi deserts" where some college students are occasionally unable to connect from home– these are relatively rare. The serious problem we discuss here has to do with the disparity of resources to help students who are disadvantaged in any way – financially, intellectually, physically, technically, socially, or spatially – to leverage the full advantages of online learning. These students begin every learning experience behind their more electronically sophisticated, Internet-savvy peers with a built-in disadvantage, a challenge that grows over time as the better-prepared students widen the gap.

In this paper, we will examine some of the manifestations of these disadvantages with several specific examples of real-world experiences. For example, students with low Social Economic Status (SES) are vulnerable because they sometimes lack the funds to buy an appropriate laptop or subscribe to a dependable online service provider. They are also less likely to have access to university technicians, librarians, and other online assistance. In community colleges where the average student is 28 years of age, there are higher technical illiteracy and technical resistance levels than for younger peers. Late-adult learners may be more confused and intimidated by technical complexity. Also, many online college classes do not have special facilities or accommodations for students with disabilities, like blindness or deafness, among others.

Online learning not only requires technical skills, but also active engagement with the course content, the faculty, and fellow students. Less experienced new students also face challenges of self-motivation and self-regulation. Students from lower SES groups often live in crowded family situations where they lack an appropriate place to study. Because of hard-to-convert classes, as in nursing and technical courses, students’ skills practice is challenging, even for the well-equipped matriculants.

There is another issue that contributes significantly to the digital chasm: the lack of preparedness of many instructors to move to digital modes of teaching. Prior to the abrupt switchover in March 2020, about one college student in three was taking at least one course online. Faculty attitudes about online learning at that time were generally not positive. For the past two decades, only about 35 percent of permanent college faculty approved of distance learning, and this number is even lower for senior, tenured faculty. So disadvantaged students may face not only a digital chasm in fully leveraging online courses but also a potentially increased risk due to uncertain attitudes and skills of the faculty.

The problem of the digital chasm for disadvantaged students does not have one easy solution. Additional funding for equipment or better bandwidth may help. An increase in tutorial staff or more careful tailoring of online software to the needs of the disadvantaged could be useful too. But the hundreds of books and articles over recent decades about various remediations in college education aimed at improved graduation rates are do not point to a clear solution.

Keywords:

digital divide, COVID-19, SES, disadvantaged students, postsecondary education, online learning, remediation in postsecondary education