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The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, many HEIs have continued to deliver courses onli...

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Autores principales: Cullinan, John, Flannery, Darragh, Harold, Jason, Lyons, Seán, Palcic, Dónal
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137268/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34778524
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41239-021-00262-1
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author Cullinan, John
Flannery, Darragh
Harold, Jason
Lyons, Seán
Palcic, Dónal
author_facet Cullinan, John
Flannery, Darragh
Harold, Jason
Lyons, Seán
Palcic, Dónal
author_sort Cullinan, John
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, many HEIs have continued to deliver courses online and/or use a blended learning approach. However, there are concerns around differences in student access to digital learning resources while at home, including high quality broadband connectivity. This is important, since variation in connectivity may impact the type of online/blended model that faculty can deliver or constrain student engagement with online content. In this context, this paper combines national data on the domiciles of students enrolled in Irish HEIs with detailed spatial data on broadband coverage to estimate the number of higher education students ‘at risk’ of poor access to high quality internet connectivity. Overall it finds that one-in-six students come from areas with poor broadband coverage, with large disparities by geography and by HEI. It also finds that students from the poorest broadband coverage areas are more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged. As a result, this paper recommends that HEIs use their detailed registration data to help identify and support at-risk students. In particular, the results suggest that some HEIs may need to prioritise access to campus facilities and services to less well-off students living in poor broadband coverage areas. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41239-021-00262-1.
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spelling pubmed-81372682021-05-21 The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students Cullinan, John Flannery, Darragh Harold, Jason Lyons, Seán Palcic, Dónal Int J Educ Technol High Educ Research Article The COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, many HEIs have continued to deliver courses online and/or use a blended learning approach. However, there are concerns around differences in student access to digital learning resources while at home, including high quality broadband connectivity. This is important, since variation in connectivity may impact the type of online/blended model that faculty can deliver or constrain student engagement with online content. In this context, this paper combines national data on the domiciles of students enrolled in Irish HEIs with detailed spatial data on broadband coverage to estimate the number of higher education students ‘at risk’ of poor access to high quality internet connectivity. Overall it finds that one-in-six students come from areas with poor broadband coverage, with large disparities by geography and by HEI. It also finds that students from the poorest broadband coverage areas are more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged. As a result, this paper recommends that HEIs use their detailed registration data to help identify and support at-risk students. In particular, the results suggest that some HEIs may need to prioritise access to campus facilities and services to less well-off students living in poor broadband coverage areas. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41239-021-00262-1. Springer International Publishing 2021-05-21 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8137268/ /pubmed/34778524 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41239-021-00262-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research Article
Cullinan, John
Flannery, Darragh
Harold, Jason
Lyons, Seán
Palcic, Dónal
The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
title The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
title_full The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
title_fullStr The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
title_full_unstemmed The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
title_short The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
title_sort disconnected: covid-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137268/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34778524
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41239-021-00262-1
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