Inclusion.
Every student in your classroom, be it virtual or physical, has the right to feel included.
2020 will be remembered for COVID-19, but it will also be remembered for the summer of justified outrage against anti-Black police violence and all forms of racism against Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. People want change, and they're right to want it. In all sectors of society, including higher education, discussions and debates are taking place about how to effectuate that change.
As an educator, I want to understand how my work can address the injustice that permeates our society. As an online educator, I have to consider the ways online educational practices might be excluding learners.
Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash.
Working through these issues, you can’t help but be struck by their intersectionality. We know that some people are disadvantaged in the online environment because they don’t have the means to purchase the right kind of equipment or to get access to the required bandwidth. This economic issue becomes a racial issue when it becomes clear that BIPOC communities “will be more likely to face remote learning challenges.”
The technological barrier has become particularly noticeable right now in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to remote teaching. It’s not the only barrier; studies consistently show that “first-generation students (those whose parents didn’t complete postsecondary), low-income students, Indigenous students and students with disabilities are less likely to enrol in postsecondary education.”
This lack of access is a societal issue, and needs to be addressed by government and educational bodies. My influence in this space is limited, but can still be expressed through advocacy, political action, and voting. Though I may not have much direct influence on policy decisions, there is one space where I can exercise a lot of influence, and that space is the classroom. The classroom, be it physical or virtual, is the student’s most vivid experience of higher education, and for that reason alone the efforts I make there have real significance.
If we understand that there are groups of people whose access to the very courses I teach is hindered, that should also make us realize that members of those groups who do make it to college or university are entering at a potential disadvantage. This disadvantage hasn’t been caused by the pandemic, but it can be exacerbated by the reliance on technology to deliver courses. There is a bitter irony here. Online instructional technology is making it possible for us to keep university education alive; without it, no one would have access to an education right now. Yet even so, it can be a hardship for many.
I may not be able to reduce the economic burden of online education, but as an online instructor I can do things to mitigate the social burdens of online instruction. First I need to do what every instructor in any course should do, and that is to make sure that everyone who is in my class knows they’re welcome in that class. This doesn’t mean that I give everyone A+ grades or never challenge a student to refine or tighten their thinking. What it means is that every student knows that if they’re enrolled in my course, they belong and have a right to learn, and I as the instructor will protect that right. It means giving every student a place at the centre of the course; no one should be on the margins. It means doing whatever is in my power to reduce any barriers that might be preventing them from reaching their intellectual potential. And it means that I support them in their learning by providing the best instruction and resources that I can.
There are specific things I can do in the online realm, such as use asynchronous methods or employ tools that require lower bandwidth to reduce the technological barriers. This is similar to how we try to make brick-and-mortar classrooms more physically accessible. None of our classroom spaces, be they physical or virtual, will by themselves support inclusion and equity. The point is to recognize that and to do what’s within our ability as instructors to make those spaces as inclusive and equitable as possible. It helps, of course, if the entire institution takes on these tasks which are often beyond the control of individual instructors. They can be supported in that if instructors can understand the reasoning for doing so (recent complaints in my own faculty about course scheduling revealed a lack of understanding about the equity and inclusion issues raised by synchronous online instruction and how asynchronous instruction can address barriers to digital literacy).
As educators we wonder how to face moments that challenge our society. For the COVID-19 moment, we are pivoting online to prevent students from losing their access to education while campuses remain closed. In this other, concurrent moment, the moment where we must address the lack of inclusion in our society, we must do everything possible to create learning spaces that are tangibly inclusive so that every student can access education and exercise their right to learn.
My thanks to SG for commenting on an earlier version of this post.
For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.
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