Online Student Equity

Of all courses offered at 113 colleges, 12.3 percent are offered through distance education and nearly half of all courses have some online component. With more than 2.1 million students on 113 campuses, over 67 percent of California community college students are people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and roughly 53 percent are female.  The Online Education Initiative considers student equity in every component of the initiative: all OEI resources are intended to increase student success for our diverse student population.  Through the Student Equity Work Group of the OEI Steering Committee, the OEI is engaged in ongoing efforts to reduce challenges, eliminate barriers, and close the online equity gap among our diverse student population, including

  • examining the institutional, systemic and learning barriers that result in inequitable outcomes and disparate impact in course and degree completion rates in online education,
  • identifying disparities and challenges associated with online student equity, and
  • identifying success strategies to address these inequities as it relates to course and degree completion.

Collaborative efforts between ASCCC appointed faculty, administrators, counselors, researchers and instructional designers, have resulted in the development of an Equity Framework to support colleges through the process of examining instruction, the delivery of student services, and institutional policies and practices through an equity lens. This framework serves to provide context and connect the proposed success strategies and focused efforts with the goal of supporting and increasing student equity in the college online environment and the OEI ecosystem.

Online Equity Framework