Many students with disabilities, unforeseen illness, or family emergencies often have to miss out on important learning time in the classroom. This causes them to fall behind and hinders their ability to succeed in comparison to their peers, creating an inequitable experience for some students. Our research project strives to improve equity in learning by using the technologies used in online learning environments.

Bell, M. P., Connerley, M. L., & Cocchiara, F. K. (2009). The Case for Mandatory Diversity Education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8(4), 597-609. 

This article relates to our research topic as it explains the importance of teaching about diversity. The authors of this piece have years of experience in teaching about diversity and management, giving them a solid background on the topic being discussed. With awareness of diversity, managers are better able to relate to employees, understand different needs, and respond effectively. It discusses the business side of things in which turnover and dissatisfaction play roles in pressuring companies to implement diversity education. They also mention the many other reasons to educate employees, managers, and owners on diversity as it boosts overall moral and happiness. This article will support our research because it explains the necessity to engage in diversity in order to improve all aspects of management, including equity. The intended audience for this article might be current managers, students in business or management classes, or people exploring diversification of business.

Easop, B. A. (2022). Education Equity during COVID-19: Analyzing In-Person Priority Policies for Students with Disabilities. Stan. L. Rev., 74, 223.

This article was written by a law student who focuses on education equity and anti-discrimination through their work in high education environments. They are qualified on educational equity, making this article a credible source for our research project. The focus of this article is ensuring learning is equitable for students with disabilities. It introduces the problem of the inequitable education that occurred during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting effects. Although policies were created to ensure students with disabilities would return to in-person learning, this article argues that these policies only further perpetuated discrmination and inequitable classroom experiences. The author of this article intends for this article to be read by policymakers, educators, and those interested in the rights of students, especially those with disabilities.

Gillis, A., & Krull, L. M. (2020). <? covid19?> COVID-19 Remote Learning Transition in Spring 2020: Class Structures, Student Perceptions, and Inequality in College Courses. Teaching Sociology, 48(4), 283-299. 

This article was written by two authors, both of which have degrees in Sociology (one a BA and the other a PhD), who discuss how college students reacted to the sudden transition from face-to-face to remote college courses in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. They conduct surveys to compare students’ reactions to the transition along with list any difficulties they faced as a result, such as lack of access to good internet, and which groups tended to face difficulties, such as nonwhite, female, and first-generation college students. The authors have found that internet and technology difficulties were very common, but instructors can use interactive formats to increase accessibility for their students. This is important to our research topic because in order for technology to be an equitable option for accessible learning, we must address any barriers that occur for those that may consider online learning tools as their best option.

Shaheen, N. L. (2022). Technology accessibility: How US K-12 schools are enacting policy and addressing the equity imperative. Computers & Education, 179, 104414. 

Similar to the above article, this one was written talking about the barriers faced by students, except this article places focus on K-12 disabled students. The author, who has a BS in and instructs courses for Special Education, talks about how these students don’t have equitable access to online learning like their peers. The author calls for the law to make technology-mediated education to be facilitated that is equitable to disabled youth. This is important to our research topic because while higher education is ultimately optional, K-12 schooling is not, and the learning gap has only expanded due to lack of access to equitable schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Goffe, William, L., Sosin, Kim (2005). Teaching with Technology: May You Live in Interesting Times. Journal of Economic Education. Summer2005, Vol. 36 Issue 3, p278-291. 14p 

This article speaks on the ideas rising in our immediate future post covid of both the abilities that the new technologies bring to aid the classroom as well as the harms it can cause in both cheating and plagiarism. This article is useful to our topic due to its subject matter aligning well with ours in that both speak on the issues and benefits of using these new technologies to better classroom learning and educational success of students. This article helps raise many potentially forgotten ideas to the table in the form of the downsides this new technology can bring and how they can be worked around to help improve its use within the classroom.

Knestis, Kirk ,Cheng, Joselina, Fontaine, Claire, M.,Feng, Rebekah (2022). Engaging Government Industry University Partnerships to Further Gender Equity in STEM Workforce Education Through Technology and Information System Learning Tools. Winter2022, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p23-31. 9p. (Is OB)

This article tells in detail about how a school program, designed to support females interested in pursuing data science, collaborated with government agencies, using their technologies in online training programs to make a more accessible learning environment in this majority male industry. It explains how several government agencies developed online tools to train employees in data science and information systems during the pandemic, and how those same programs could be implemented in schools. This supports the premise of our project, that more underrepresented groups will feel more comfortable pursuing different fields of study in an online context, and that we can use training technology developed from the pandemic to support that.

Ben Henrikson, Duncan Brown, Josie Steele, and Ophelia Lake