scholarly journals The Digital Divide in Online Education: A Study of Underserved College Students

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuefei Deng ◽  
Sheng Yi
2022 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengmeng Sun ◽  
Lidan Xiong ◽  
Li Li ◽  
Yu Chen ◽  
Jie Tang ◽  
...  

Objectives: During the pandemic, quarantine has led to the lockdown of many physical educational institutions. Thus, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become a more common choice for participants. MOOCs are often flagged as supplemental methods to educational disparities caused by regional socioeconomic distribution. However, dissenters argue that MOOCs can exacerbate the digital divide. This study aimed to compare the participants' performance before and after the outbreak of COVID-19, analyze the impact of the epidemic on online education of cosmetic dermatology from the view of the regional socioeconomic distribution, and investigate whether MOOCs exacerbate the digital divide in the COVID-19 epidemic.Methods: The study was conducted in participants of the MOOC course Appreciation and Analysis of Cosmetics from January 2018 to December 2020. Based on the platform data and official socioeconomic statistics, correlation of multivariate analysis was used to determine the factors related to the number of total participants. A panel regression model and stepwise least squares regression analysis (STEPLS) were employed to further analyze the relationship between GDP, population, number of college students and number of total participants in different years in the eastern, central and western regions of China.Results: The number of total participants in 2020 surged 82.02% compared with that in 2019. Completion rates were generally stable in 2018 and 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and significantly decreased in 2020 after the outbreak of the pandemic. GDP was the most important socioeconomic factor that determined the total number of participants and it was positively related to the total number of participants before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. The number of college students was unrelated to the total number of participants before the epidemic, and after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, the number became positively related in all regions of China.Conclusions: This study shows that the epidemic pushes more people to choose MOOCs to study cosmetic dermatology, and online education could exacerbate rather than reduce disparities that are related to regional and socioeconomic status in the cosmetic field in the COVID-19 pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10762
Author(s):  
Thien Khai Tran ◽  
Hoa Dinh ◽  
Hien Nguyen ◽  
Dac-Nhuong Le ◽  
Dong-Ky Nguyen ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic, since its beginning in December 2019, has altered every aspect of human life. In Vietnam, the pandemic is in its fourth peak and is the most serious so far, putting Vietnam in the list of top 30 countries with the highest daily cases. In this paper, we wish to identify the magnitude of its impact on college students in Vietnam. As far as we’re concerned, college students belong to the most affected groups in the population, especially in big cities that have been hitting hard by the virus. We conducted an online survey from 31 May 2021 to 9 June 2021, asking students from four representative regions in Vietnam to describe how the pandemic has changed their lifestyle and studying environment, as well as their awareness, compliance, and psychological state. The collected answers were processed to eliminate unreliable ones then prepared for sentiment analysis. To analyze the relationship among the variables, we performed a variety of statistical tests, including Shapiro–Wilk, Mc Nemar, Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon, Kruskal–Wallis, and Pearson’s Chi-square tests. Among 1875 students who participated, many did not embrace online education. A total of 64.53% of them refused to think that online education would be the upcoming trend. During the pandemic, nearly one quarter of students were in a negative mood. About the same number showed signs of depression. We also observed that there were increasing patterns in sleeping time, body weight, and sedentary lifestyle. However, they maintained a positive attitude toward health protection and compliance with government regulations (65.81%). As far as we know, this is the first project to conduct such a large-scale survey analysis on students in Vietnam. The findings of the paper help us take notice of financial and mental needs and perspective issues for indigent students, which contributes to reducing the pandemic’s negative effects and going forwards to a better and more sustainable life.


Author(s):  
Kristina M Scharp ◽  
Tiffany R Wang ◽  
Brooke H Wolfe

Abstract As U.S. higher education institutions closed their campuses and transitioned to online education due to the high risk for COVID-19 transmission, first-generation college students (FGS) were particularly susceptible to multiple stressors. Findings from a sample of 44 participants reveal seven resilience triggers, four resilience processes, and three relationships between resilience processes and triggers. Based on these findings, we advance the communication theory of resilience by establishing the ways triggers can be structural, emergent, and overlapping and by theorizing resilience processes as both enduring and time-bound/contingent. We also employ a new qualitative method, thematic co-occurrence analysis, to illuminate the relationships between the resilience triggers and processes. Practical applications for higher education administrators, teaching instructors, and student support professionals are described.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelia R. Cotten ◽  
Shameeka M. Jelenewicz

Author(s):  
Plamen Miltenoff ◽  
John H. Hoover ◽  
Galin Tzokov

Based on the recent proliferation of online education and the ongoing technological revolution, this research focused on interaction of students and faculty as a main contributor to the success of online education. During 2003, a survey was distributed to convenience samples of faculty members and students from the Midwest of the U.S. and three Eastern European countries. The data reflects students’ and faculty members’ opinions about the state of technology, online communication, and instruction. The results confirm findings from the literature about the existence of a digital divide between developed and emerging nations. Although Eastern European respondents don’t benefit from the technology base of their American correspondents, their satisfaction and comfort with technology remains relatively strong. The digital divide may result from administrative rigidity; Eastern European students enjoy less access to computer labs, due to fewer and less flexible hours. Faculty members and administrators remain entrenched in “old” technologies such as e-mail, whereas Millennials expect newer communication tools and prefer synchronous ones. Considering the available technology, online assessment is employed relatively inconsistently. Libraries as technology providers are perhaps underutilized particularly in Bulgaria, Moldova, and Macedonia.


Libri ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lih-Juan ChanLin ◽  
Te-Lien Chou ◽  
Wei-Hsiang Hung

AbstractEqual access has serious implications for the growing chasm in learning in remote areas and in economically disadvantaged communities. To help bridge the digital divide for children in remote areas, engaging communities to provide the needed resources in remote schools is essential. With an aim to promoting teachers’ adaptation of tablet reading and teaching among remote schools, a platform for sharing experiences and exchanging ideas among teachers was developed. College students also volunteered for follow-up mobile reading promotion in order to provide needed human resources for tablet reading integration among disadvantaged communities. Collaborative efforts by the university and teachers in remote schools provided a case for study. The main issues explored in this study were: (1) how teachers in remote areas adapted tablet reading in the classroom, and (2) what university students experienced from promoting tablet reading. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of integrating volunteer services and civic engagement in promoting tablet reading, and highlights the mutual benefits, challenges, and recommendations for future implementation. Various data resources were integrated into the inductive analysis, and different resources were used for triangulating the reported phenomena. The study concludes that the teachers obtained experience of tablet reading, and the college students experienced innovative volunteer-service opportunities. The collaboration among the society, the university, and learning sites were all essential for promoting tablet reading among children in remote areas.


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