List of Tables

All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

Table 3.1 Statements on academic accommodations in ten

first-year-course syllabi 58
Table 3.2 Comparison of language signaling tone in syllabi 64
Table 8.1 Institute Timeline 195
Table 11.1 Curriculum of care chart template 289
Table 11.2 Curriculum of care chart for empathy for education
leadership online course 291
Table 11.3 Curriculum of care chart for empathy workshop 296
2022. Palgrave Macmillan.

xix

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 CHAPTER 1

Introduction
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

Laura Parson and C. Casey Ozaki

Education in virtual settings1 is a reality that was forced on almost all

higher education practitioners in March of 2020, yet online education
was already a reality for many higher education practitioners prior to
COVID-19 and looming on the horizon for many of the rest. COVID-19
accelerated, at a significant financial, emotional, and mental cost, higher
education’s transition to virtual education. In 2020, the transition of
courses and content online occurred almost overnight, which required
instructors to transform a face-to-face or hybrid course into an online

1 We use online and virtual interchangeably in this volume to refer to education delivered
synchronously and asynchronously via virtual methods including Learning Managements
Systems (LMS) like Canvas and Blackboard and live videoconferencing programs like
Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

L. Parson (B)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
C. C. Ozaki
University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
2022. Palgrave Macmillan.

L. Parson and C. C. Ozaki (eds.), Teaching and Learning

for Social Justice and Equity in Higher Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88608-0_1

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 2 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

medium. This transition required instructors to, at a minimum, transition

content, transform teaching methods, and learn new technologies. They
did this all while dealing with the impact of a pandemic on their lives and
the lives of their students. Even without the added pressure of a global
pandemic, creating or revising an online course requires a great deal of
(often unpaid and/or unrecognized) work, and so this quick transition
was often rocky and fraught. The “education of the future” was accel-
erated to the present, and this revealed the need for more knowledge,
training, and innovation in virtual education. Furthermore, and criti-
cally, the transition to virtual education also illuminated stark disparities
between students’ access to higher education content when delivered
virtually, which further exacerbated existing disparities.
Indeed, COVID-19 and the resultant transition to virtual education
highlighted what critics of online education had been saying for years:
online education is not the panacea for all of higher education’s woes.
Without careful and thoughtful attention, online education can exac-
erbate problems of access, equitable inclusion, and content knowledge
construction. Yet, online higher education can also present an opportu-
nity for expanded access to higher education, diminished student costs,
and increased profit. There is potential (perhaps great potential) for virtual
education to promote social justice in ways that traditional higher educa-
tion cannot. But the costs of online higher education are real, too, and
we will illustrate some of those costs through an exploration of the
history of online education and a problematizing of the tenets on which
many pro-online education arguments are based. We begin this introduc-
tion to the volume with a brief and targeted overview of the history of
online education, followed by a discussion of its limitations and potential
for great harm. Then, we discuss the opportunities presented by online
education, the opportunities on which this volume is premised. Finally,
we conclude with an overview of the chapters included in this volume
and, we hope, cautionary optimism that, with careful attention and inten-
tion, social justice can still be promoted in online and virtual education
settings.

Overview of Online Education

Feenberg (2017) described the emergence of online education as a
supplement to distance education—educational content was sent via mail
to students—where students would “discuss” the content received with

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 1 INTRODUCTION 3

fellow students on a web forum tool. The first course delivered that
way was through Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in 1982 (Feen-
berg, 2017). While this use of an online tool was to supplement student
learning, there had been attempts to replace instructors with technology
as early as the 1950s with Computer Aided Instruction (CAI), although
those attempts were not successful; computers cannot replace human
interaction (Feenberg, 2017). Yet, as budget cuts in higher education
became a perennial challenge, institutions viewed online education as
an economic alternative to live, human interaction (Feenberg, 2017).
These pushes for online education sought to remove the need for human
interaction despite technological advances that were allowing virtual
interactions to happen more easily and synchronously (Feenberg, 2017).
As virtual tools continued to evolve and facilitate synchronous human
interaction more easily, the next major innovation in online education
came with Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), which brought
courses to thousands of students through direct instruction mediums, like
videos and readings, with evaluations and discussions, facilitated by peers
instead of instructors (Feenberg, 2017). MOOCs were also viewed with
excitement in higher education as a cost-saving course delivery model
(Turner & Gassaway, 2019), yet they had a 90% dropout rate (Feenberg,
2017) and raised concerns about the ease in which western knowledges
are exported to non-Western locations, further colonizing global higher
education (Adam, 2019; Reyes & Segal, 2019). However, those criti-
cisms did not temper hopes that MOOCs could help to bring education
one step closer to automation and, therefore, reduce faculty salary costs:
“The promise of technology is the transformation of education into a
decreasing cost item, like CDs or pencils. Initial investment in courses
may be high, but the nth copy will be nearly free. Economies of scale
will save mass education from bankruptcy” (Feenberg, 2017, p. 365).
Indeed, online education outside of the MOOC model, which had largely
fallen out of fashion prior to COVID-19 global quarantines, raised hopes
that higher education could be exported nationally and globally and
simultaneously reduce costs (Smith et al., 2018).
Pre-COVID, more common than fully online courses, synchronous or
asynchronous, were blended courses, where different types and amounts
of online resources were incorporated into face-to-face classes. This was
often seen through the use of Learning Management System (LMS)
such as Canvas, Blackboard, or Google Classroom where portions of
the content were delivered online. One example of a blended classroom

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 4 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

model was the “flipped classroom,” where direct instruction was delivered
asynchronously for review prior to a synchronous course meeting that
often met face-to-face. Class time in the “flipped classroom” was dedi-
cated to projects, collaborative learning, and answering questions, which
represented a “customization” of education typical of blended educa-
tion (Grimaldi & Ball, 2021). Blended education became, at least in
some ways, a foundational part of the “hybrid” model that was touted
by higher education institutions as the course delivery model during
the 2020–2021 academic year. Hybrid courses during COVID-19 were
explained at my (Laura’s) institution as a model that allowed for students
to attend in-person, virtual-synchronously, virtual-asynchronously, or a
combination of the three and still receive a similar educational experi-
ence. The description of “hyflex” or hybrid/online education as creating
equal access to course content is evidence of the extreme ways online
educational tools were marketed as creating equitable access but, in prac-
tice, required exceptional levels of work from faculty and still could not
feasibly offer the same educational experiences across virtual and in-person
settings. The need to promote a seamless experience for students who
had various expectations for a pandemic college experience illustrates how
the student, conceptualized as a consumer, impacted education delivery
through the pandemic. Altogether, understanding neoliberalism provides
additional insight into the ways that virtual education is marketed and
discussed by higher education leaders.

Online Education and Neoliberalism

Although a deep exploration of neoliberalism is outside the scope of this
chapter, understanding how a neoliberal view of higher education impacts
the management and organization of higher education is key to under-
standing the ways that institutions talk about online education and online
learners. According to Maiese (2021), neoliberalism is “an ensemble of
ideological forces and norms whose primary aim is to construct a specific
kind of social reality, one in which every aspect of human life is managed
and evaluated in relation to market demands” (p. 285). In a neoliberal
environment, higher education is viewed a commodity instead of a public
good (Mayo, 2017), and students are the consumers; through a neolib-
eral lens, the individual student is responsible for learning the content as
long as the institution has provided the educational product (Grimaldi &

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 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Ball, 2021). In this view of students, students are expected to be self-

directed, motivated, and seek out any needed help and support (Winslow,
2017); as consumers who are responsible for their own development, they
are also expected to continue learning across their lifetime to increase or
maintain their role as a valuable participant in the economy (e.g., life-
long learning. Through a neoliberal lens, an institution must supply the
educational product that helps students to meet an economic goal (i.e.,
employment; Maiese, 2021). Once an institution provides an adequate
educational experience to students, students are responsible for being
successful: “blame is placed on individuals, not the structure, institution,
or external circumstances that put them in a position to fail in the first
place” (Winslow, 2017, p. 587). This allows institutions to place the
blame on students who do not succeed as lacking motivation, skills, or
foundational knowledge instead of being held accountable for lacking
content, delivery, and/or student support. Further, by marketing online
education as a method for increasing access to content using examples of
marginalized learners who were successful online, institutions tout online
education as a social justice initiative that will emancipate disadvan-
taged learners without the infrastructure, content, and practices needed
to create a truly inclusive and emancipatory online learning experience
(Winslow, 2017).
Neoliberal market changes, such as the privatization of public services
or the rapid shift to online learning tools during the COVID-19
pandemic, often occur during crises:

in the wake of geopolitical unrest, economic turmoil, and natural disas-

ters … neoliberalism can then absorb the most painful effects of these
manufactured crises by shifting chaos and upheaval onto easily disposed of
populations: the poor, the sick, the immigrant, and the elderly. In contrast,
it is the powerful and aligned that can take full advantage of neoliberal
disasters. For them, neoliberalism represents a platform where free individ-
uals can then compete fairly, unencumbered by bureaucratic interference
from the state. (Winslow, 2017, p. 587)

In these “raids on the public sphere” (Winslow, 2017, p. 587), neoliber-

alism thrives on crisis, “because it is only in vulnerable moments—when
citizens are psychologically unmoored, economically fragile, or physi-
cally uprooted—that old habits could be remade in accordance with the
purity and perfection [sic] envisioned” (Winslow, 2017, p. 586). Prior

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 6 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

to the pandemic, online education had most firmly taken root in the
for-profit education sector: “it is a natural occurrence whenever techno-
logical evolutions disrupt the status quo that they initially take root at
the bottom of the market—in this case in online education’s adoption in
for-profit schools, community colleges, and nonselective public schools—
before moving up and displacing more established institutions” (Winslow,
2017, p. 583). For institutions, online education can be an opportu-
nity to increase profits: “By appealing to efficiency, cost-effectiveness,
and disruptive technological innovations, online education facilitates the
commodification of higher education in ways that reflect the core princi-
ples of market logics. For example, online education discourses can scale
up from hundreds of students to thousands and millions at minimal cost”
(Winslow, 2017, p. 591). As the pandemic forced a shift to online educa-
tion, institutions might now try to capitalize and keep or expand online
delivery of courses where it proves viable (and, perhaps, even where it
did/does not lead to equitable learning outcomes).

Problematizing Online Education

Early on, online courses were often delivered by private and/or for-
profit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix in the United States,
where education relied on discussions facilitated by tutors and deliv-
ered pre-recorded content created by professors in a way that combined
“deprofessionalization and automation” (Feenberg, 2017, p. 369). Across
the industry, online courses had high attrition rates (Feenberg, 2017),
students had reduced access to on-campus resources (Smith et al.,
2018), and, reportedly, students felt like they were paying the same
price as on-campus students for a lesser education (Smith et al., 2018).
Faculty reinforced reports of diminished educational environment online,
reporting that they struggled to create and implement critical peda-
gogy and provide important emotional support online (Smith et al.,
2018). Research supports the assertion that an online education is “less
than:” “When the face-to-face educational relationship is substituted for
a screen, interaction becomes strained, less enjoyable, and less reward-
ing” (Winslow, 2017, p. 585). As a consequence, online education often
limits social interaction between students (Winslow, 2017, p. 585): “the
online learning environment affords and solicits a more distant, less
fully embodied mode of communication and interpersonal engagement.
There are few opportunities to develop the sorts of communicative skills

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 1 INTRODUCTION 7

needed to navigate disagreement or partake in ‘difficult conversations’

about controversial issues” (Maiese, 2021, p. 294). The challenges of
online education are not mitigated by synchronous courses: Although
synchronous online classes may increase opportunities for interaction and
collaboration, they cannot not adapt to the reality of student lives (espe-
cially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, when family schedules
drastically changed; Schwartzman, 2020).
The online student often targeted by online education is classified as
underserved (Feenberg, 2017), and many students may need access to
technological tools that are not evenly available across the “digital divide,”
such as appropriate bandwidth, software, computers/tablets, consistent
access (Schwartzman, 2020; Smith et al., 2018). A student’s frustra-
tion with trying to access the content because of technology limitations
can become a barrier to learning that occurs before instruction begins.
According to Winslow (2017), prior to COVID-19, online learners were
“more vulnerable to unforeseen events, are less technically skilled, less
confident in their technical abilities, less likely to have Internet access and
access to computers, have less prior computer training, less educational
experience, lower class ranks and incoming GPAs, less learner readi-
ness, less awareness of their own learning style, and are more likely to
work outside of school” (pp. 585–586). Further, even though online
courses are often marketed as more accessible, learning materials may
not be always truly accessible (e.g., lacking alternate text for images)
(Schwartzman, 2020).
The promise of online higher education was to increase access to
people who would have been traditionally excluded, either through test
scores, location, or money (Winslow, 2017). Yet, when access is limited
by technology, materials are inaccessible, student interaction is limited,
and/or content is delivered without regard to context, that promise fails,
and the failures of higher education are replicated online. Within a neolib-
eral environment, where the onus is on the student to perform, failure
is seen as the student’s fault even when infrastructure has not been put
into place to support student learning. Crisis only serves to reinforce an
emphasis on individual responsibility, valorizing students who are able to
succeed despite increased challenges, “reinforcing the meritocracy that
accompanies privilege” (Schwartzman, 2020, p. 510).
Online education also puts additional labor on faculty and instruc-
tors. Pushes for more online education often come in times of increased
retrenchment measures (e.g., budget cuts, reduced hours, program cuts),

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 8 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

where an increased teaching load may come with the additional burden
of increased online education requirements (Smith et al., 2018). Smith
and colleagues (2018) found that online education created challenges for
instructors as it related to their available time, as faculty had to spend time
converting face-to-face courses to online formats, reviewing increasing
numbers of student discussion posts, all while they faced pressure to be
available to students all of the time. This resulted in less time for research
and other scholarly activities and less time for individual attention for
students. While online education may have been promoted as an oppor-
tunity for professors to make their content available nationally or globally,
the pressure put on faculty to create online content, record high-quality
videos, and facilitate online environments—skills that most faculty are not
trained in—resulted in an increased workload and increased pressures to
perform to meet market demand (Winslow, 2017).

Opportunities for Online Education

Despite numerous concerns about online education, it is still considered
by many to be one future of higher education that increases access to
previously unavailable content and credentialing. We suggest that many
of the promises of online education are still possible, although that
possibility relies on appropriate instructional methods, thoughtful use of
technology, and attention to equitable student access, which we define
as access not limited by technology or dis/ability. Yet, even equitable
access must be carefully considered, especially as access to Western beliefs,
methods, and systems of thinking risks further colonization through
delivery methods, teaching methods, and colonizing content:

At risk are diverse approaches to learning, indigenous ways of teaching, and

unique perspectives on how knowledge is transmitted and received within
different cultures. Because technology design and development accelerate
exponentially, countries which have fewer resources, infrastructure, and
knowledge base become set in the role of education consumers, and those
countries which have greater technology resources continue to benefit
as the producers and deliverers of higher education on a global level.
This producer–consumer relationship increases dependency upon Western
approaches to higher education and further promotes a growing power
differential among nations and cultures. (Reyes & Segal, 2019, p. 382)

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 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Although globalization is often touted as an unmitigated good, whether

or not content should be globalized through online learning needs to
consider the audience and if and how the educational processes, including
the content, perpetuates colonization (Reyes & Segal, 2019).
Altogether, online education has the potential to vastly expand access:
“distance formats of course delivery are valued for their capacity to
expand access for students who are socially disadvantaged or geograph-
ically isolated. It is believed that students from remote communities,
Indigenous students, students with varying (dis)abilities, and others who
face structural barriers to accessing post-secondary education can achieve
a degree without leaving their home communities” (Smith et al., 2018,
p. 699). Online education, especially as it reaches a wide audience
and connects individuals that may not have otherwise been connected,
provides an opportunity for consciousness raising, or an, “opportunity
for disadvantaged populations to build community responsibility and
engagement” (Reyes & Segal, 2019, p. 380). Online education,

creates opportunities for those who would not otherwise have the chance
to pursue higher education to expand their understanding of social condi-
tions and thereby raise their levels of awareness. Such consciousness is
an essential means of acquiring the tools to succeed in local and global
economies and social structures. In this educational environment, tech-
nology may be harnessed to incubate ideas to alleviate poverty, separation,
and oppression. (Reyes & Segal, 2019, p. 380)

The achievement of these goals, however lofty, requires careful attention

to content, access, teaching methods, and use of technology. We discuss
each component of virtual education in this volume.

Outline of the Volume

In this volume, we discuss ways to mitigate the potential harms of online
education as well as opportunities to expand access to content, promote
social justice, and consider equity and inclusion in course design and
delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic led higher education courses as well
as student affairs and faculty development programming to move to
virtual and online settings. This revealed a clear gap in the skill set for
higher education professionals across the board—most were not trained as
instructors and almost none had received formal training in synchronous

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 10 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

and asynchronous online. While virtual classroom settings can provide

new ways of access to higher education, if those virtual settings do not
consider privilege, access, and equity, those settings will just serve to
reinforce and replicate existing marginalization and disempowerment.
In this book, the fourth volume of the series, we focus on how to
promote social justice in higher education in virtual and remote class-
room settings. Chapters focus on updating the scholarship of teaching and
learning in the context of the online classroom, providing updates to the
application of traditional learning theories in virtual and remote settings,
and specific applications of SoTL to improve teaching and learning to
promote equity in the classroom through specific content areas such as
STEM.
Chapter 2, Designing and Using Online Discussions to Promote
Social Justice and Equity, provides an overview of the research on the
experiences of underrepresented students in online courses and share
resources to build on student strengths to create welcoming classrooms.
Using culturally responsive pedagogy, universal design for learning, and
transformative learning, the authors demonstrate how to create equi-
table small group online discussions using multi-modal asynchronous and
synchronous technologies.
Chapter 3, Designing the Syllabus for an Online Course: Focus on
Learners and Equity Online, describes how syllabus design can create
challenges for learners and provides actionable steps and examples for how
instructors can leverage technology to create syllabi that meet the needs of
diverse learners. The author’s focus is on how to create a learner-centered
syllabus that both centers learning and equity, including ways to consider
accessibility and context.
Chapter 4, Synergistic Pedagogies in Virtual Spaces: Preparing Social
Justice Educational Researchers Through SoTL, discusses approaches to
teaching qualitative research methods courses online with a focus on how
empathy, critical questioning, and ambiguity inform the exploration of
power structures as a part of research design and analysis. The authors
also discuss how to teaching these courses online to promote reflection,
critical questioning, and empathy.
Chapter 5, Remoting into STEM Summer Bridge Programs, describes
how to adapt a STEM summer bridge program, a program that has
been identified as important in recruiting and retaining students tradition-
ally underrepresented in STEM programs, in virtual environments. After
discussing the components of successful bridge programs, the chapter

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 1 INTRODUCTION 11

describes methods for adapting a program to a virtual environment

through the lens of creating Culturally Engaging Campus Environments
(CECE: Museus, 2014).
Chapter 6, Transitions, engagements, and environments: Supporting
underrepresented students through e-learning, presents curriculum and
pedagogical strategies for faculty to incorporate through the lens of the
Equity-Minded Framework and Technology Acceptance Model. These
frameworks are used as ways to help ensure that underrepresented
students are engaged and supported to flourish in an e-learning format.
The authors provide tools and resources to support learners from diverse
backgrounds in multiple education settings and levels.
Chapter 7, Brave New World: Transformational Teaching for a Web-
based Multicultural Education Course in the Age of COVID-19, explores
the difference between a “safe” space and a “brave” space, exploring why
creating a brave space is needed to promote more equitable learning
spaces that promote social justice. Through the lens of transformative
teaching, this chapter provides actionable recommendations to create a
virtual classroom environment that balances challenge and support and
encourages critical reflection.
Chapter 8, Building Virtual Communities of Practice for Equity in
Education, discusses how to help practitioners implement equity changes
in their schools. The authors discuss how to create virtual communities of
practice and examines the experiences of participants in the RIDES Insti-
tute through the lens of Ubuntu. Through the framework of Ubuntu,
the chapter explores how creating communities of practices that includes
teachers and school leaders can create a sense of belonging through a
shared mission.
Chapter 9, Resisting State Violence: Teaching Social Justice Virtu-
ally in an Era of Black Lives Matter and the Coronavirus, discusses how
COVID-19 and 2020’s uprisings against structural racism led to a recon-
ceptualization of how to build community, teach histories of anti-racist
movements, and to prepare students to engage politics virtually. The
author describes how he reimagined teaching history and organizing in
a virtual setting in a way that helped students to develop the organizing
tools they needed to mobilize people for protest, create political education
projects, and to form their own organizations.
Chapter 10, Four Keys to Unlocking Equitable Learning: Retrieval,
Spacing, Interleaving, and Elaborative Encoding, reviews four of the most
heavily researched and empirically supported cognitive learning principles:

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 12 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

retrieval practice, spaced learning, interleaved learning, and elaborative

encoding, and makes suggestions for how they might be incorporated in
virtual setting to create more equitable learning outcomes.
Chapter 11, Teaching Empathy Online Through an Ethic of Care,
envisions teaching empathy online through the lens of an Ethic of Care.
The authors adapt a framework for teaching through an ethic of care for
teaching empathy online in various content areas and settings. An ethic
of care emphasizes relationships and perspective taking, which makes it a
valid framework for teaching empathy online in a way that promotes social
justice and promotes development at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and
global level.
Finally, Chapter 12, Queering the Classroom: Emancipating Knowl-
edge(s) through (Found) Poetry, proposes (found) poetry as an instruc-
tional tool to disrupt normative classroom practices and uncover
alter/native interpretations of course material. Through the lens of Queer
theory, the author discusses how (found) poetry can engage students in
discussion on relevant topics to the course material, interpretations of the
course material, and classroom discussions on how student make sense of
the world.

Conclusion
As I (Laura) was writing the introduction to this volume, the fourth and
likely final volume in this Teaching and Learning for Social Justice in
Higher Education series, I was simultaneously fielding emails from faculty
in response to an internal request for proposals (RFP) for programs that
would like to seek funds to become completely virtual. In many ways,
the conversation I would like to have with my colleagues mirrors much
of what I covered in this chapter, which began with a brief overview
of online education and then proceeds to a problematization of online
education, especially as it relates to creating a more equitable and inclusive
higher education environment, one that promotes social justice. Before
COVID-19, online education was touted as a solution to higher educa-
tion’s problems of scale, funding, access, and relevance in a way that
reflects the neoliberal reality of the higher education market-place. That
argument is still being used by institutions today, who may see the forced
transition to online education as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
as an opportunity to create new online programs and, therefore, new

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 1 INTRODUCTION 13

pathways to increased attendance and profit. Yet, the transition to online

education and the delivery of online education is rarely as simple as it
seems, even with courses that were (forced) to be delivered virtually
throughout the pandemic. The additional (unpaid or underpaid) labor
required from higher education practitioners with any transition to virtual
education is often formally (and informally) unrecognized in a new public
management logic that governs a neoliberal shift to higher education.
For my colleagues, and perhaps all programs discussing whether to
pursue a completely virtual and asynchronous delivery model, the conver-
sation needs to be grounded in an awareness of why higher education
institutions might offer to financially support efforts to go virtual—the
view of online education through an economies of scale argument is
tempting in a higher education environment struggling with low enroll-
ment, continuing budget cuts, and pressure to treat students as paying
customers. Through that understanding, a program might see how a
virtual delivery could benefit both the program and its faculty: receiving
funds to work on the transition to an online program as well as the
potential for increased student enrollment in the new program might
help to keep one employed, as it becomes increasingly difficult to ratio-
nalize one’s job if there are no students enrolling in the program. Yet,
the costs of transitioning to and delivering an online education program
are not limited to time, and those costs are often unpaid and unrec-
ognized. Teaching and delivering an online course often requires more
work, albeit different work, and the mental and emotional toll of that
work are different and often misunderstood if not completely unacknowl-
edged. Online education also results in a potential cost in decreased
scholarly productivity and increased student support and time demands,
costs that have to be measured and balanced in making any decision to
take a program online. The impact of these changes are complicated by
questions about if and how the transition to online education can truly
do what it purports to do without negatively impacting student access.
Online education is not the panacea scholars once hoped it could be,
and its use needs to be thoughtfully considered, planned, and its impacts
assessed for it to continue to educate. The need for attention to content,
methods, and assessment is increased in efforts to promote social justice
through online education. The authors in this volume address some of
those key considerations. If virtual education is both our present and
our future, we hope that this volume can inform practice in ways that
allow for immediate implementation of teaching methods, frameworks,

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 14 L. PARSON AND C. C. OZAKI

and models to promote equity, inclusion, and diversity in the higher

education classroom.

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