Policy Brief 1 - Access, the Digital Divide, and Special Populations

Access to the Internet is an important issue to consider as a part of our departmental policy. Knowing that different students will have different abilities to access the Internet should affect how we go about designing out courses and department.

In order to make sure that our students are given equal opportunities in our courses, we must ensure that they are given equal access to the learning. There are a few considerations we need to take into account:

• People of varying socioeconomic status will have varying access to the Internet;
• Distance students will require more constant access to the Internet than full-time students;
• Distance students are more likely to be working full time and thus have less time to access our classes;
• Literacy has a different meaning with online materials and physical access alone isn't enough to compensate source;
• Students will have varying experience with computers;
• Our adult distance students will not be "digital natives" and so may feel less comfortable using computers and the Internet to learn;
• Varying access will make it hard to require identical participation in classes.

In order to address these concerns, we should adopt a department-wide policy on what we require from our students in terms of Internet access. We should address how often they must be able to have access and for how many hours every week. We should standardize an idea of what will routinely be expected of them. We must provide support for those who are not as familiar with computers and may be lacking in digital literacy.

In sum, we must make clear our expectations of students, while providing necessary support to enable them to meet those expectations.