Supporting Equity in Online Learning during COVID-19

As universities and colleges around the world moved online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions were raised about the impacts of this transition on institutional commitments towards and capacity to provide equitable learning environments: access to all students, inclusive experiences within courses and/or programs, and achieve equitable outcomes across all intersections of diversity—including, but not limited to, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, socio-economic background, levels of parental education, access to technological resources, and geographic location. In this chapter, we report on our systematic review of institutional policies and communications in response to the pandemic at four different Canadian universities to explore how they attended to issues of equity and student success in an online/remote environment. As part of a larger data set, the research team analysed existing institutional policies related to online learning, the public institutional communication (particularly to students) about the transition online, and the explicit commitments made to support the creation of equitable learning environments for students. This examination of how equity has been framed and addressed during a time of global crisis will have implications for the future development of equitable learning environments in higher education.