ABSTRACT
Technology and education, especially online education, are topics of great
interest in higher education due to changing student demographics, university
budgets, and competition. The academic community is clearly open to online
learning: enrollments have seen steady increases over the past decade, including
a 12% increase in 2007 in the number of students taking an online course
(Allen & Seaman, 2008). Many instructors are fully embracing this new medium,
delivering their courses using a variety of technologies from the simple to
fringe and experimental. In our enthusiasm, however, we cannot ignore that even
though 57% of American households today have access to the Internet (Kruger
& Gilroy, 2009), the digital divide is still a significant factor in the effectiveness
of innovative technology in the online classroom. The impetus behind online
education has always been increasing the availability of education to those who
would otherwise not have access, and in a physical sense, it has been very
successful: thousands of students who would not be able to physically attend
a face-to-face class have earned college degrees online. If, however, our online
classes employ technologies that many online students cannot fully participate in,
we may be causing an electronic version of the physical problem we have worked
so hard to solve. And it is the innovative use of technology as well as the
incorporation of new and advanced technologies in education that complicate
the concept of the digital divide today beyond its original meaning of access. In
this chapter, we will examine ways the digital divide has changed over the past
decade, analyze some of the more prominent new technologies being employed
in online education, and discuss how the more complicated issues of the digital
divide today give educators more to consider when introducing or requiring
these new technologies in their courses.
