Bridging higher education’s new digital divide

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Sara Custer: A new university semester is upon us and it marks the next phase of higher education during a global pandemic. Universities have learned a lot in the past 18 months that is no doubt informing how they plan for a year of online or face-to-face or hybrid classes. But the digital divide that was so apparent during the first phase of the pandemic and impacted so much of teaching and learning has yet to be bridged. I’m Sara Custer and in this episode of the Times Higher Education podcast, I speak with Lauren Herckis at Carnegie Mellon University. She’s an anthropologist who specializes in faculty culture and the use of technology in higher education. We discuss how the new digital divide, one where students and faculty aren’t able to access digital tools or use them fluently, is going to be a huge challenge for the next phase of digital higher education and what universities can do about it.

Sara Custer: Lauren, thanks so much for joining me today.

Lauren Herckis: So glad to be here.

Sara Custer: I know that you are now in the throes of preparing your own class for the upcoming semester at Carnegie Mellon. Give us a bit of a scene setter on where you think universities in general are at the moment as they’re preparing for another year of uncertainty in the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lauren Herckis: Well, universities and everyone associated with them have lived through this past year and a half of uncertainty. So like the rest of the human community, we’ve learned a great deal and lost a great deal, and we’re stretched in unimaginable ways. I think we all hope to build on the lessons of the past year, and we’re working as best we can to shore up against the most challenging aspects of the uncertainty to come. But what that means for institutions and individuals is going to depend a lot on the local context and capacity and experiences over this past year and a half.

Sara Custer: Certainly, and that capacity is what we’re talking about today. And drawing on your research into what you’ve called a new digital divide. And certainly the term digital divide will probably be quite familiar to our listeners. Can you tell us what the difference is between digital divide and new digital divide?

Lauren Herckis: We’ve been speaking for a number of years now about differential access to the digital. That some folks, by virtue of where they’re born and grow up, the types of education that they’re able to receive, the types of infrastructure that they’re able to access, have deeper experience with and deeper or more extensive access to the digital, which makes it a lot easier to engage in contexts where digital engagement is required. The new digital divide really reflects an expansion of this understanding to not just accessing the tools, but being able to use them fluently and to understand deeply their application in novel contexts. In other words, it’s one thing to provide a student with a laptop and another thing to expect the student to use that laptop effectively to communicate with their peers and instructors and to enhance their learning experience.

Sara Custer: How has the pandemic changed your view on both the digital divide and the new digital divide?

Lauren Herckis: Well, the pandemic has driven home very rapidly the dependencies, the extent to which we depend on technological and digital infrastructure, and these disparities as well, the extent to which many people, many, many people simply don’t have the kinds of access that we take for granted. And so, a lot of institutions went to great lengths to get students, staff and faculty access to digital tools and technologies so that they would be able to continue to engage with the institution, with education, despite the restrictions that the pandemic made possible and necessary in many instances. There are some institutions where going remote, which was the response of many institutions, was simply not possible. There just wasn’t the infrastructure to expect students to be able to connect to campus digitally. In some contexts, the infrastructure, you know, internet access or broadband access may be readily available, but not accessible to students or faculty because of their economic conditions, because of their home conditions, because of the infrastructure at the institution or where the institution is located. Some institutions were better equipped to distribute devices or access amongst those affiliated with the university that needed it. And some were less so. And so this is very uneven. In terms of the new digital divide, getting access to the technology was just the first step. Many, many of us have heard stories about how terrible online education is. And a lot of the time, this is because just connecting remotely is not enough. We need effective educational experiences in order to feel connected, in order to learn, and in order to engage in all of the ways that a classroom education engages us. But creating those educational experiences takes time, resources and specialized knowledge. That specialized knowledge is where the new digital divide comes in. Knowing how to enact good pedagogy is a valuable skill set that not all educators have training in. How to enact good pedagogy to create effective, engaging learning experiences using digital tools requires two skill sets, digital literacy and pedagogical training, neither of which have, shall we say, a long and deep history of broad access for educators in postsecondary contexts.

Sara Custer: On THE Campus, this conversation that we’re having coincides with the spotlight that we’ve put together with different resources and guides from academics around the world on the new academic skill set that we’re calling it. That is this kind of new tool belt that academics find themselves needing to have either explicitly or implicitly from the higher ups at an institution. Can you speak a little bit about what you view the new academic skill set to be?

Lauren Herckis: I think that the academic skill set has in some ways been the same for decades, centuries, even millennia. You know, we, as a species, humans teach and humans learn, and we’re accustomed to doing this. We do this best in ways that are social and structured and that are connected to real life application. Doing that well in a university setting, doing that well in a postsecondary setting, requires a lot of different people to come together and agree on what education means and how it works best. And for educators and everyone who is supporting them, understanding good pedagogy, well, understanding how to teach effectively is simply not intuitive. So, increasingly, over the past several decades, access to training in effective teaching, ideas about evidence-based teaching strategies, and access to the means of teaching effectively have become much more common in postsecondary contexts around the world. Now, teaching technologies have changed dramatically in the last decade. They’ve really undergone a sea change. The ways in which educators rely on educational technologies, even things like communication technologies, email, for example, or learning management systems, has changed a lot. But there are also these new digital tools that can dramatically redefine the educational experience, collaborative documents and cognitive tutors or personalized learning. These are really powerful new tools for enhancing educational experiences and improving educational outcomes for students. But they do take specialized knowledge, both to use the technology and then to use it well. These are separate skill sets that are not always available to educators. Training in pedagogy and training in educational technologies are invaluable and rarely available.

Sara Custer: When you were talking about the digital divide, you’ve mentioned a little bit about socioeconomic backgrounds of students and just kind of general connectivity. Let’s talk a little bit about any sort of cultural, class or identity issues that might be coming into play when we’re talking about the digital divide for faculty specifically.

Lauren Herckis: Well, so when we talk about the digital divide, we’re talking about differential access, differential access to money, to power, to technology, to education. Differential access maps to differences in power, and so do identity, culture and class, some of the questions that you’re posing here. But often there’s a false association made between culture and, for example, digital literacy. Whereas these power differences, differences in access, difference in socioeconomic status or class or positionality in society are the crucible in which identity and culture develop. So culture and identity aren’t the reason that people don’t have the skills or the fluency or the experience that we’re talking about when we talk about the digital divide. They run parallel to a lack of access or extensive access to technologies, skills, resources and support. That means that we end up with marginalized people of all kinds. We can talk about race, we can talk about class, we can talk about gender, we can talk about social networks. And marginalized people have less access and fewer resources and find it more challenging. They experience more barriers to gaining access and gaining skills. And access can be both to the material needs or to the technologies themselves, but also to the kinds of support that can be invaluable to building those skills and those pathways to engaging with students effectively.

Sara Custer: One thing that comes up quite a bit when we’re speaking about teaching, especially within higher education, is that how it’s perhaps undervalued within the culture of a university and how the incentive structures that are in place for academics are very much based around research funding, research achievements, grant money. When we’re talking about pedagogy and the training that is part of this new academic skill set, is there an issue there in terms of academics getting on board with that and really seeing the value of improving their own academic skill set through pedagogical training?

Lauren Herckis: What a great question. To oversimplify, I will say that many postsecondary institutions that train future faculty focus on disciplinary knowledge, and that makes perfect sense. If you are going to become a chemist, really understanding chemistry is vitally important. Of course, it’s central. So, folks who are receiving doctorates become deep experts in their field of study. Very few institutions preparing future faculty also provide explicit training or support to develop other ancillary skills, whether that’s applying these skills outside of academia or teaching that expert knowledge, which is, as I said, its own skill set, or using the tools and technologies that might be useful in research or teaching, or developing the professional network or professional profile that might be important for securing a job. These are ancillary skill sets that are rarely part of future faculty preparation at the postsecondary level. Now, when new faculty are hired at most universities, there are two pathways. One is what folks most commonly think of when we think of faculty in universities, which is tenure-track faculty who are hired and stay on for many years and develop their art and their practice and their research in context. Most faculty in these positions are hired based on their training and research experience, their disciplinary knowledge. And of course, there’s a lot of evidence that having gone to a recognizable school and studied with well-recognized mentors goes a long way as well. But the hiring is not based on teaching for the most part, is not based on teaching experience, pedagogical skill or digital literacy. The onboarding of new faculty rarely focuses on developing these skills. And review, retention and promotion tend not to focus on effective teaching. Whether we’re talking about effective implementation of evidence-based pedagogies or outcomes for students, for the most part, this plays a relatively small role in review of faculty for retention and promotion. So, universities, of course, very regularly say that this is our mission. We seek to educate students and to provide an excellent learning experience, in addition to many other things. But the folks who do the educating, who are in these secure and traditional roles, very rarely are given those tools or reviewed on those. I should say the faculty who do most of this teaching and are widely recognized as the faculty in postsecondary contexts may have access to training in pedagogy or in digital tools for teaching, but their expertise in these skill sets are not central to their continued employment. These are not the factors on which they’re reviewed or promoted for the most part. But of course, that ignores the global majority of educators who are not in secure positions in academia, who are contingent faculty. This is an increasing number of educators who teach one or two classes for an institution without a secure contract or secure employment. And in most of those cases, they don’t even have access to the kinds of supports that are available to other faculty. So even if they wanted to go to a center for teaching and learning and ask for training in pedagogy or have access to an office with colleagues who they could collaborate with to build those skills, they don’t have that. And many of these faculty also aren’t explicitly supported by the kinds of support systems that postsecondary institutions have. So if they want tech support or if they want training or if they think that access to archives would be valuable or use of particular specialized technologies would be useful, they couldn’t access those even if they wanted to because they’re in these highly precarious positions without the same types of support.

Sara Custer: Another part of this pandemic has been universities really taking a look at the digital infrastructure that they have on their campuses and perhaps considering what sort of investments they should be making now as they’re moving into the next phase of digital delivery. What sorts of considerations do you think they should be making to ensure that their campuses are future-proofed? You talked about a sea change in educational technology that you’ve seen in the past 10 years. How can universities prepare for the next 10 years and more potential sea changes?

Lauren Herckis: That is a phenomenal question. How do we prepare for the future in a time of increasing uncertainty? I think that the only possible answer is to prepare for uncertainty. So we build these flexible skill sets, these flexible toolkits. And to a certain extent, that means supporting development of pedagogical skills that can be applied across contexts. You know, in many different corners of the sector, we are finding folks who are really looking forward to returning to campus and sitting in a classroom with students this fall. And those plans are rapidly changing. And so many folks are discovering that they may need to pivot again. Now, we’ve learned a great deal with the emergency very rapid transition to something different in March of 2020. Different institutions and different educators experienced that differently, but for virtually everyone, it was a really dramatic shift. The 2020 to 2021 school year was quite different because it wasn’t an emergency transformation. So different institutions prepared in different ways. There were some that invested in digital or technological infrastructure. There were some that invested in pedagogical training and support for faculty. And of course, there were many other kinds of supports. Some did both, some were not able to do either. So now we have lots of new tools in our toolkits and the opportunity to plan for a new school year. But we don’t know what we’re planning for. And, you know, that’s fortunately or unfortunately not unusual. Future-proofing is, of course, a wonderful goal, but the future isn’t always what we expect it to be. So, one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is the degree to which it takes a great deal of time and planning and careful implementation of evidence-based tools and strategies to create a really effective, really good experience for students, particularly when we know that our modality might shift. When we might be able to meet in person, we might have to meet remotely, we might have in-person activities with many individuals, students or educators who are not there physically and some who are. And so, what does it mean to plan for uncertainty? Frankly speaking, tools can help us get where we want to go. Educational technologies are invaluable when we know what we want to create and we use them to that end. They’re very rarely the solution themselves. And in order to envision an effective, flexible, evidence-based educational experience, we need training in pedagogy and digital literacy. We need to deeply know what works for students, what’s possible for educators, and what makes for an easy shift when a shift is necessary. And then identify the tools and technologies that can help us instantiate that in a way that’s really effective and easy. Because the last thing we need, if anything truly uncertain takes place, is added complexity.

Sara Custer: Is there a risk of universities perhaps incorporating technology for technology’s sake?

Lauren Herckis: There’s always a risk of universities, of schools at all levels, of institutions of all kinds using technology as a solution when it’s just technology for technology’s sake. It can be hard to remember that tools are a means to an end, and you need to really be focused on the end and not the tools in order to get there. Technology for technology’s sake is unfortunately common in education, and that’s for good reason. There are a lot of really exciting tools and technologies that we know are one vital piece of a possible solution to a real problem. It’s easy to forget that there are other pieces that are necessary: the human element, the pedagogical element, the institutional and policy elements as well need to change in lockstep when we introduce new technological solutions.

Sara Custer: Let’s talk about that policy element. You’ve mentioned a couple of things that could be improved, talking about academic precarity, pedagogical training. We just talked about some infrastructure ideas. From a policy perspective, what sort of changes do you think university leadership can make to address this new digital divide among faculty and perhaps students?

Lauren Herckis: I think that that’s a really challenging question to answer because different universities are in different places to start with. So some are already making policy changes and some are not when it comes to the digital divide among students and faculty. I think that university leadership can ensure that faculty have access to the best pedagogical supports and to the digital tools that they might want or need to realize their vision for an effective classroom experience, whether that classroom is in person, is remote, is hybrid, is any number of different ways. And for students to ensure that students have access to the tools and technologies, but also to the communities and practices that will help them have a really rewarding, really effective educational experience. Universities do a lot of different things. Of course, when we think of universities, we think about learning, and teaching and learning are central to the idea of a university. But when you ask a college student why they go to college or what they like about college or what they get out of college, teaching and learning, that’s only one small piece of the puzzle. And ensuring that peer learning and social growth and connection and building those relationships between different people, faculty, students and staff at an institution are also part of the equation is vital. Now, there are a lot of institutions that are well positioned to take this multifaceted nature of education into account. And there are other institutions that are less well positioned to do so. There are students who are able to engage on lots of different levels with a university education. And there are students who face many more barriers to digital or to all kinds of different engagement. And so, from a policy perspective, I think it makes sense for university leadership to focus on closing divides by ensuring access to those who have the least access. Focus on the marginalized students and the marginalized faculty and see what we can do to ensure that they do have the support they need to build these skill sets that will make life easier, regardless of context, regardless of the digital context or the epidemiological context.

Sara Custer: So, that it sounds like what you’re saying is kind of bring in the non-tenured track professors, bring those people into any sort of decisions that universities are making whenever they’re looking at big investments or perhaps strategizing for the next five years, however much that’s possible to do.

Lauren Herckis: Oh, certainly. You know, if contingent faculty are more focused on whether or not they will be employed or have health insurance or need to move their family to another country or state in the following semester, they have much less bandwidth to develop an effective learning experience this semester. And when they’re left out of decision-making or resources and opportunities, then they can’t benefit from those to benefit the students and institutions. So certainly, you know, it’s in institutional interest to support all educators as effectively as possible.

Sara Custer: Lauren, thank you so much for your time and for your for sharing some of your research with us about the new digital divide in universities. Really appreciate it.

Lauren Herckis: Thanks so much for the invitation to be here.

Sara Custer: Great. Take care. Talk to you later.

Lauren Herckis: Thanks. Take care.

Sara Custer: Bye-bye.

Lauren Herckis: Bye.

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