| | December - January8Reimagining Access: Leveraging Mobile Devices to Transform EducationBy Bill Moseley, Ph.D, Dean of Academic Technology, Bakersfield College, Alex Rockey, Ph.D. Instructional Technology Instructor, Bakersfield CollegeIn March 2020, schools and universities across the United States were forced to transition to remote learning in a matter of weeks or in many cases days due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. As our Academic Technology team worked to support faculty during this pivot, we felt grateful for existing technologies like Zoom and Canvas which helped to support a smoother transition. These technologies, however, were largely dependent on students' access to sufficient computer and internet access. It became immediately apparent that these access issues had shifted from annoyances to absolute barriers to student learning in many cases, as we could no longer rely on access to public computers and public access to the internet to assist in closing the gap.Even before the pandemic, the assumption that people had reliable internet in their homes had been debunked in PEW's 2019 report. In this report, the PEW research center found that one in four adults did not have broadband at home (2019). In an earlier report, by contrast, the PEW Research Center found that mobile device ownership is nearly ubiquitous (2018). At the intersection of these two reports, there is an opportunity for educators to meet student needs in a more equitable fashion. Students already have the tools in their pockets that they need to engage with learning in meaningful ways. As instructional designers and educators, we just need to use those mobile devices more effectively. At Bakersfield College, we are launching a multi-faceted instructional design fellowship program in which we collaborate with faculty to reimagine how we design online courses to leverage affordances while mitigating constraints (Rockey, 2020). In the instructional design fellowship "Person Up," a faculty member and an instructional designer work together to design high-quality course shells for high-demand community college courses. These course shells will integrate humanized, equity-minded, culturally-responsive, and data-directed approaches to reimagine how we teach online. A fundamental aspect of this course design process will be designing with the assumption that students will be accessing courses with their phones and not with a computer. This shift in perspective will support a universal design for learning approach in which we ensure that the course is fundamentally accessible to students using mobile devices from the beginning. Alex Rockey, Ph.DIN MY OPINION
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