Tackling Digital Poverty to Improve Student Outcomes
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, existing social inequalities were made plainly visible to a wider audience. This was no less true in the higher education sector, where inequities among students became increasingly clear and wider.
These inequalities bleed into the use of digital technology in teaching provision. With blended learning becoming the norm, access to digital devices is a central issue for those working in student support. As the government’s Get Help With Technology scheme supported school pupils across the UK throughout the pandemic, the programme did not extend to university students, and many professionals in the sector found themselves discussing the concept of ‘digital poverty’ and what they could do to tackle it.
Yet, even as the pandemic comes to an end, digital poverty still poses a threat to equality across the sector.
It's vital that higher education professionals seek to deliver interventions that tackle the digital divide. This blog article outlines the concept of digital poverty and suggests a series of action points that practitioners can take to mitigate its effects.
What is 'Digital Poverty'?
The Office for Students (OfS) considers a student to be in digital poverty when they lack one of the following ‘core items of digital infrastructure’:
Appropriate hardware
Appropriate software
Reliable access to the internet
Technical repair and support when required
A trained teacher or instructor
An appropriate study space
Clearly, then, the concept of digital poverty extends far beyond simply having access to a working laptop or internet.
These conditions make it evident that there will be differentials in how students experience digital poverty. A student who lives in university accommodation on or close to campus, for example, will be more likely to have access to an appropriate study space, internet access and hardware than distance learners or students with caring responsibilities.
Deliver resources in a centralised platform
Teaching and learning resources should be made available to students in an online ‘space’ which is easy-to-use, reliable and secure. Examples of such spaces might include a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or a Learning Management System (LMS), often hosted by a cloud service.
There are plenty of benefits to using this kind of platform:
Students can access learning resources using low-cost, low-maintenance devices
Students can access their work and resources both on-campus and remotely
It removes the need for expensive devices and reduces the chance they will be stolen
In the case that a device is lost or stolen, students can still access their work via the cloud
VLEs provide data analytics to help you track metrics such as course completion rates and content traffic – this can help you identify students with low engagement and potential improvements to your digital teaching provision
While most institutions may already have a VLE in place, it’s not always used effectively. Especially when it comes to digitally impoverished students, there is a need for further consideration of how content and teaching experiences are delivered on these platforms to suit the needs of different learners.
The University of Warwick have set up a Learning Circle, which aims to gather student and staff feedback to identify areas in which their use of a VLE could be enhanced.
It’s likely that your VLE provider will also offer guidance on how to get the most out of their service. For example, Moodle Academy offers a wealth of resources, including webinars and online courses, to develop administrative skills for the platform. Blackboard also publishes a series of helpful blogs, which address key topics such as how their platform can be used to improve student retention and attainment.
Support Digital Literacy and Skills
Ensuring that digital skills are covered within the curriculum can help to build the confidence of students who may not have as much experience using digital technology. Consider setting up modules on your institution’s VLE that serve to build the digital knowledge of both students and academic staff.
Collaborate closely with academic colleagues to find ways that digital skills can be embedded into existing curricula. This will be easier for subjects, such as those that fall under the STEM category, than for others, like arts and humanities.
The following resources offer informative guidance on how to develop, deliver and assess modules that build capability across different digital skills areas:
The Open University’s Digital and Information Literacy Framework
Jisc’s Developing Digital Literacies guide, which includes 20 top tips for student support services
AdvanceHE’s hub of Digital Literacies Starter Tools
This article in The Guardian which explores 20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education
By building the digital literacy among students, we can begin to reverse some of the inequities or knowledge gaps exposed, produced or exacerbated by the pandemic, thereby raising attainment among disadvantaged students.
Be sure to ask for feedback from students and staff, so that you can evaluate the success of these modules and adapt where necessary.
For further examples of implementation in the sector, see the University of Cardiff’s Digidol project and the University of Liverpool’s Digital Literacies Working Group.
Enhance the Study Environment
One of the OfS’s key criteria for defining digital poverty concerns having access to an appropriate study space. This includes not only sufficient access to the internet but also to a quiet study space.
Of course, the home is not always a quiet or carefree space for all students. Those who have caring responsibilities, dependents or difficult family relationships may not have access to such an environment.
It’s increasingly important to provide alternative spaces where students can study. In addition to offering computers and decent internet connection, you should try to make sure that the study spaces you provide are:
Open and accessible at all times – students with part-time work or caring commitments will need to access them at alternative hours.
Heated – with energy bills rising, many institutions are offering 24-hour heated study spaces for their students.
Peaceful and quiet – they should be separate to recreational spaces such as common rooms. You may also consider setting up a room booking system for group study to decrease noise.
With these steps, you can ensure students have access to ‘an appropriate study space’ whilst also addressing other issues arising out of the cost-of-living crisis, such as concerns about energy bills.
Adapt Teaching Delivery Models
How do your students interact with digital teaching and learning methods? It’s unlikely that a live online teaching session, without closed captions or the ability to view from a mobile device will be accessible or appropriate for all students. For digitally impoverished students, accessing these materials can be even more problematic as they may not have access to a computer or stable internet connection.
In these scenarios, AdvanceHE suggest pre-recording elements of this session in a format that could be downloaded to be a mobile phone, such as a podcast or screencast. This would remove the need to ‘live stream’ key elements of the session for students with connectivity issues or limited mobile data. It would also mean that students could watch these materials on their mobile device using headphones, without the need for a quiet study space.
Similarly, it’s worth thinking about how young people use the internet. Studies show that young people are increasingly ‘online’ and engaged with social media.
Are there ways that your teaching can be delivered over or extended to these platforms? This could be used to increase engagement. For example, you might consider running Twitter contests or developing hashtags that encourage students to share their work and experience or build off of existing research such as this paper, which proposes a framework for integrating social media as a learning tool in higher education.
As institutions shifted to online teaching during the pandemic, feedback from students from this period will be fundamental in devising a successful approach to blended learning. Wiley’s article on using student feedback to create online learning experience is a good starting point.
By delivering online learning that responds to the diverse needs and abilities of your students, you can mitigate the differential access issues students face when it comes to technology and connectivity.
The digital divide will continue to grow as rising costs affect the higher education sector and society at large. Student support services across the sector are conducting vital work in tackling digital poverty among their student population.
Some key questions professionals as the sector integrates blended learning approaches in the cost-living-crisis might consider:
How do we devise assessment approaches that consider the digital divide?
How do we measure student success – in terms of outcomes, engagement and attainment – in light of differentials in access to digital technology?
How can we redistribute or provide additional resources to students who are most in need?
