evansPh.D. is an associate professor of sociology at San Diego Mesa College, faculty vice president of AFT Local Guild 1931, and a court-appointed youth development special advocate for Voices for Children. She lives in Santee.
Whether online learning is an effective tool for increasing accessibility is an increasingly troubling topic for those of us working in community college districts. As a professor of sociology at San Diego Mesa College, I’m not just talking about making colleges and university courses more accessible to people with neurodivergent and physical disabilities. People who experience structural violence such as institutionalized racism, sexism, heteronormativity, gender bias, and classism also face barriers to accessing higher education. These obstacles create inequalities in education that community college administrators, faculty, and staff are trying to address.
What does it mean when we say that online courses are more “accessible”? Students with disabilities may prefer to learn online rather than deal with transportation, physical building, or other social space deficiencies. We say it’s easy. For students with medical disabilities who need to take packed courses to maintain financial aid and, more importantly, health insurance, it’s easier to be flexible and take classes at your own pace. For students with neurodivergence, it is easier to remain in the digital shadows than to deal with the myriad effects of ignorance and social bias. For students who can’t afford a car or sky-high gas prices, or who are concerned about overconsumption of fossil fuels, she says online learning is better than spending more than four hours on the bus. (This was the round-trip time from North Park to Mesa College the last time I tried.) Alternatively, for students who are caring for children, parents, or other loved ones, the only time taking the course is It’s a choice. These necessary forms of care work are completely unpaid and are therefore carried out online. These are the most common reasons my faculty colleagues use to justify the escalating increase in online teaching. Before COVID-19, less than 5 percent of Mesa College’s sociology courses were offered online. Currently, my colleagues and I have to fight tooth and nail each semester to have about 50 percent of our sociology program classes taught in-person.
Sociology faculty at Mesa College are fighting so hard to ensure that students who choose online courses develop the creative, deep thinking and interpersonal skills that can only be achieved through spontaneous, face-to-face social interactions. Because you’re sacrificing construction. More importantly, we encourage institutions to make that sacrifice by offering more courses online, while keeping in-person learning structurally inaccessible. That’s what I’m doing. With online options, what would motivate policymakers to make in-person classes more accessible? Nothing happens.
Education requires space for creative problem solving and spontaneous, often nonverbal communication. It’s a space where spontaneous statements, facial expressions, subtly rambling sentences, and other unique, informal, and often unintentional types of communication ultimately bring out important ideas and kill bad ones. is required. In a recent study of nursing students, researchers found that the benefits of online learning depended on the course content, and that “a lack of sociability and interaction between students and tutors undermined learning motivation, teamwork, and the quality of discussion.” I discovered that there is a possibility that ” In a face-to-face classroom, these seemingly unproductive physical, face-to-face interactions blossom organically and substantively.
Accessibility means addressing the structural arrangements that perpetuate inequitable access to higher education and access to “hidden curricula.” That means addressing the economic and political structures that prevent many students from experiencing the idyllic four-year boarding college experience. The imperative to maintain high enrollment rates stems from structural pressures to make education a commodity rather than a human right. And the same structural pressures make online learning more convenient and therefore more “accessible.” (This ignores the issue of disparities in access to technology.) If we blindly embrace the moving train of online learning, we risk blindly reinforcing the very structures we are trying to dismantle.
Online learning is a tool at best, but it’s not a silver bullet for accessibility. At worst, it is a market-driven project that fetishizes “flexible learning.” Online learning can actually be a bullet against equity if not used with careful self-reflection, moderation, and the highest standards of academic integrity.
Social arrangements that divide us into bosses and workers and demand hyper-efficiency and hyper-production to increase profits make higher education less accessible to people in underserved and marginalized communities. is the same as Reliance on software companies like Canvas and an “all seats at the table” approach to enrollment reinforces interconnected forms of inequality. If we are not careful and thoughtful about our use of online learning, we will continue on a path of ever-evolving inequalities that we must break.
