Digital Learning and the Digital Divide during COVID-19

Photo by Bruno Figueiredo on Unsplash

This post is the result of discussions with MALAT classmate and colleague Rebecca Coyle, prompted by the readings and our chosen area of examination, poverty and the digital divide, and how it has been impacted by digital learning. We chose to focus in particular on the impact of emergency remote teaching as a result of COVID-19, and the impact it has had on those affected by the digital divide.

The subject of the digital divide has been discussed at length since the late 1990s. As Web 1.0 began to reach its peak, and the participatory Web 2.0 (Stewart et al., 2019) started to appear on the horizon, it became clear that access was – and would continue to be – an issue. More than a quarter-century later, while technology has evolved, allowing incremental advances to take place that have increased access and lowered cost, digital poverty (Learning Hive, 2020) still exists not only outside of the “global north” but also here in Canada.

The Internet Society defines the Digital Divide not as a binary construct, but as a complex continuum of interconnected factors that include not only access to networks and the technologies needed to connect to them, but also dimensions of availability, affordability, quality of service, relevance, and additional divides in digital inequality (Muller & de Vasconcelos Aguiar, 2022). 

Issues of availability, affordability, and quality of service are often thought to be challenges faced by “developing” nations, and while this does remain true in many parts of the globe, disenfranchised communities still exist in Canada, and although infrastructure issues still primarily affect rural and indigenous communities, issues of affordability and access are equally present among disenfranchised urban populations.

We will examine digital learning and its impact on the digital divide, with challenges and opportunities focused primarily on the issues of infrastructure and access, but also the social impacts of digital learning on vulnerable learners.

Defining Digital Learning

Veletsianos (Veletsianos, 2016) defines a Digital Learning Environment as not only “educational software, a digital learning tool, an online study program or a learning resource” (Suhonen & Sutinen, 2006), but also “technologies, resources, platforms, and systems originally created for purposes other than education, but which came to be used for teaching and learning purposes.”

It is also important to note that over the course of the pandemic, the form of digital learning most learners and teachers have been engaged in is far from ideal. Well-planned and well-executed digital learning is very different from the kind of learning experiences in we create in response to a public health crisis, a natural or human-caused disaster, or other mass trauma event (Hodges et al., 2020). The lack of planning, pedagogical review, and professional development resulted in a sub-optimal teaching and learning experiences for many, as teachers at all levels struggled to rapidly adapt and re-purpose in-person lessons for digital delivery, using digital tools and platforms that were new and unfamiliar to many. Brenna Clarke Gray (2021b) refers to it as “crisis teaching,” which is an impassioned and meaningful way of framing it. I will use the term used by Hodges et al. (2020), “Emergency Remote Teaching” (ERT) as a way of encapsulating these thoughts, and how the digital learning we engaged with through the pandemic is distinct from fully developed and carefully considered Digital Learning Environments as defined by Veletsianos et al.

This rapid pivot to ERT exposed many factors that need to be addressed in creating successful digital learning experiences and highlighted many systemic barriers to adopting digital learning on a broad scale. It also revealed that many gaps in the social fabric of learning have been only superficially addressed by school systems, and when the in-person supports offered by schools were no longer accessible, the gaps were once again visible.

Digital Infrastructure and Access

According to Katherina Koch at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Policy, the Canadian Government has had in place an objective of ensuring high-speed internet access – defined as 50 Mbit download, 10 Mbit upload speeds, and unlimited data transfer – by the year 2030 (Koch, 2020). This goal has been in place since the year 2016, and while progress has been made, it continues to be slow.

In rural communities, access to high-speed internet infrastructure remained at about 40% in 2018, with first-nations reserves faring even worse, at around 30% (CRTC, 2019). In urban communities, the issue is not so much access but affordability. While the infrastructure is in place, access remains out of reach for many. Programs such as Connecting Families exist to help subsidize the cost of internet access by providing affordable broadband service to qualifying families.

The move to ERT during COVID-19 shifted thinking about broadband internet as a “luxury” to it being an essential part of being able to function and participate in 21^st century daily life. Previous strategies such as using public libraries and community centres as internet access hubs for those without access at home were clearly insufficient, leaving many without internet access when public facilities were closed during the pandemic. With a target date of 2030, infrastructure is not being built at a rapid enough pace to address the widening digital divide, and communities being left behind. Furthermore, while 50/10 Mbps internet access seemed abundant in 2016, the rapidly increasing demand on bandwidth with a household of remote learners and workers suggests that by 2050, this baseline speed may be insufficient. 

Although the impact of digital learning on the inequity of internet infrastructure and access may be seen as a net negative, the awareness and urgency brought about by the global pandemic made it clear that more rapid action is needed. One positive impact is that as a result of COVID-19, Bell has accelerated its plans to roll out high-speed wireless home internet services, as announced in April 2020 (Koch, 2020). Emergency Remote Teaching has identified that further acceleration of infrastructure build-out and lowering of barriers to access are very urgently needed.

Impacts on Vulnerable Learners

Schools play an important role not only in the education of our children, but also in identifying and supporting those who may need additional assistance due to “detrimental social, economic, and (or) educational factors” (Eloff et al., 2007 as cited in Whitley et al., 2021). Monitoring the physical, mental, and social health, development, and well-being of learners is an important secondary role of education at all levels. Physical presence in school is a reliable way to ensure that students’ needs are being met and provide mechanisms to activate additional supports when deemed necessary.

Moving to ERT took away the ability to provide those “wellness checks,” leaving many vulnerable learners without the support they were getting from their teachers, educational assistants, school nurses, social workers, counsellors, and other allied workers. Students who relied on additional supports in the classroom were often affected adversely by the move to ERT, and those who may have already been behind their peers were more likely to fall further behind (Clinton, 2020; Masters et al., 2020 as cited in Whitley et al., 2021). 

“For some students, schools are the only place they feel safe and can engage in satisfying relationships with peers and adult educators. In many communities, schools are also a hub for food programs, child care, mental health services, disability supports, extracurricular activities, and even medical services” (Dorn et al. 2020, as cited in Whitley et al., 2021)

In examining whether academic achievement was affected by COVID-19, studies conducted in several countries showed “small, significant declines, with a few studies showing greater inequity for students of colour, those with a migration background, or from families with fewer years of formal education” (Whitley et al., 2021). Data from Canada is currently limited, but it stands to reason those patterns seen in other regions are likely to be reproduced here. 

Students with special educational needs showed lack of developmental and educational progress, and regression in prosocial and behavioural aspects, as reported by parents and caregivers (Whitley et al., 2021). 

On a more positive note, the reduction in interpersonal physical interactions appears to have reduced the prevalence of both physical and cyberbullying (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2021). Although the data are correlational in nature, it does appear to show that remote learning allowed victims of bullying some reprieve.

The way forward

We have only just begun to unpack the lessons learned from the pivot to emergency remote learning during the pandemic, and we have tremendous opportunities to learn from this unprecedented shift in our relationship to learning, to work, and to digital enablement of these fundamental parts of our lives. 

In her Digital Detox blog series, Brenna Clarke Gray identifies many issues associated with “crisis teaching,” including those around access to infrastructure and technologies, social and academic impacts on learners, but she also touches on the fact that investments have not been made in smaller class sizes or professional development for teachers at all levels to learn more effective instructional design and delivery (Clarke Gray, 2021a). 

The last two years have made us all very aware of the impacts of Emergency Remote Teaching on learners and teachers and the institutions where we learn and teach. Many of those impacts were there before COVID-19, and rose to the surface of our collective consciousness because of the extraordinary circumstances we all found ourselves in. 

Out of those impacts we can also find opportunities, which has been one of the driving forces behind me starting the Master of Arts – Learning and Technology program at Royal Roads University. We have opportunities to guide education policy, technology acquisition, instructional design and delivery, to address issues surrounding the use of technology in learning, and how to make meaningful progress toward not just bridging, but closing the digital divide.