Post-secondary students with disabilities and digital learning: What do we know about their lived experiences? Djenana Jalovcic Athabasca University Canada
[email protected] Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature on lived experiences of students with disabilities in digital learning environments. There is an increasing number of students with disabilities at post-secondary institutions in North America that are legally obliged to provide equal access to students with disabilities. Advances in educational and assistive technologies provide new educational opportunities to meet the needs of diverse population of students with disabilities. Despite these trends, legal obligations, and opportunities, students with disabilities still face barriers, and their overall participation and attainment rates are lagging behind that of their peers without disabilities. Understanding commonalities and structures that underline the issue from the perspective of students with disabilities is a less-researched area, and thus warrants investigation. Keywords: students with disabilities, post-secondary education, lived experience, phenomenology
The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature on lived experiences of students with disabilities in digital learning environments. There is an increasing number of students with disabilities at postsecondary institutions in North America that are legally obliged to provide equal access to students with disabilities. Advances in educational and assistive technologies provide new educational opportunities to meet the needs of diverse population of students with disabilities. Despite these trends, legal obligations, and opportunities, students with disabilities still face barriers, and their overall participation and attainment rates are lagging behind that of their peers without disabilities. Understanding commonalities and structures that underline the issue from the perspective of students with disabilities is a less-researched area, and thus warrants investigation. There is a paucity of literature on lived online educational experiences of university students in general (Kinash and Critchon, 2003; Lichtman, 2011) and students with disabilities in particular. Kinash and Critchon (2003) reviewed first two North American phenomenological studies that examined the student experience of studying online, pointing out their importance for the field of online education and the need to use methods that are more inclusive of learners’ voices. Existing qualitative evidence indicates that experiences of students with disabilities do not differ greatly from experiences of their peers without disabilities (Wald, Draffan & Seale, 2009). However, Wald et al. (2009) pointed out aspects of experiences that are unique to students with disabilities: the need
to learn at the beginning of their university careers about assistive technologies to help them study; having less time to learn than students without disabilities because of disability related issues; and the need to use technology effectively and in an agile way to assist learning. Students with disabilities were skillful users of technologies, but materials that were inaccessible or incompatible with assistive technologies presented barriers to their learning (Wald et al., 2009).
It is recognized that online learning creates opportunities for academic participation and success for students with disabilities. Students with disabilities reported that the flexibility of online learning gave them opportunities for academic success (Heindel, 2014; Terras, Leggio, & Phillips, 2015), and they were satisfied with being able to set their own pace with coursework, having more time to process information, and not needing to commute (Heindel, 2014). The asynchronous learning environment improved learning experiences of students with learning disabilities and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in six areas: clarity, organization, asynchronous access, convenience, achievement, and disability coping mechanisms (Graves, Asunda, Plant, & Goad, 2011). A study of performance of students with disabilities in a higher education virtual campus showed that participants were both successful and unsuccessful in completing tasks on virtual campus. Their performance was affected both by environmental factors such as features of the virtual campus and by personal factors such as their own implementation of cognitive and behavioural strategies (Hollins & Foley, 2013). Seale, Draffan and Wald (2010) called for more research on this complex relationship between learners, their assistive technologies, and online learning environments.
The following section reviews three phenomenological studies of experiences of students without disabilities in online courses, students with disabilities in face-to-face university courses, and students with disabilities taking online courses.
Bambara, Harbour, Davies, & Athey (2009) conducted a phenomenological study of the lived experience of 13 community college students without disabilities who were enrolled in online high-risk courses (HRC) with high withdrawal and failure rates. They identified four structural themes that marked the experience of participants: isolation, academic challenge, ownership, and acquiescence. These themes were constituents of the essence of the experience et al. described as “delicate engagement” – a term “that speaks to the vulnerable threads of academic and
social involvement that permeated the HRC student experience” (p. 219). These vulnerabilities were implied in the structural theme of isolation that was marked by loneliness that participants felt when they tried to connect with the course, instructor, and their peers. The second structure, academic challenge, was described by participants as feelings of being overwhelmed when they faced the difficult course content, structure, and technology, as well as their unrealistic expectations of the course. Ownership was articulated by participants as embracing the course with its challenges and demands. The fourth structural theme of acquiescence was represented by slow and gradual giving in to the loneliness and demands of the courses, and submission and compromise that led participants to give up ownership of the course. Bambara et al. (2009) recommended several strategies to remove barriers as experienced by students in high-risk courses, including orientation for students about course expectations, level of effort, time, and focus; examination of institutional policies and practices to ensure that student support and academic support services are available; and provision of mentoring and required participation of instructors in professional development on best practices in online education.
In a phenomenological study from a disability theory perspective, Denhart (2008) looked at experiences of barriers to higher education for 11 college students with learning disabilities who were enrolled in a campus-based institution. Barriers were mostly linked with external and social factors rather than personal factors and individual pathology. Denhart (2008) identified the following three barriers as experienced by students with disabilities: being misunderstood by faculty, being reluctant to request accommodation for fear of stigmatization, and having to work longer hours than peers without disabilities. The study suggested that barriers could be removed by improving the understanding of faculty about learning disability, engaging the assistance of the college learning disability specialists, and increasing the empowerment of students with learning disabilities.
The experiences of higher education students with disabilities in online courses were studied in a phenomenological doctoral dissertation by Heindel (2014). The purpose of his study was to investigate how online learning is experienced by students with disabilities, what factors facilitate or inhibit their online learning, and how instructors’ facilitation of online learning is perceived by students with disabilities. Twelve students with various disabilities who attended a campus-based university and who took at least one online course participated in the study. Originally designed as a mixed method study, it was turned into a phenomenological dissertation because of richness of the qualitative data. Six major themes emerged from the data: students with disabilities liked the
flexibility of schedule; they had privacy concerns; they perceived a lack of interaction in online classes; their instructors lacked understanding of disabilities; disabilities support services did not fully inform them about accommodation options; and the online context allowed them more time to process information. Based on the interviews Heindel conducted in this study, he suggested that more training for instructors as well as more collaboration between instructors and offices for disability services were needed in order to proactively address needs of students with disabilities. He called for more research that would bring the individual perspectives of students with disabilities to the issue of how to improve online learning.
Some commonalities in these studies identified themes for students with and without disabilities in online environments, and student with disabilities in online and face-to-face learning environments. Students with disabilities shared a feeling of isolation with students without disabilities in online high-risk courses, as both groups perceived a lack of interaction (Bambara et al., 2009; Heindel, 2014). Students with disabilities in online learning environments had fears of stigma because of disability disclosure, faced a lack of understanding by faculty, and had to spend more time studying than their peers without disabilities (Denhart, 2008; Heindel, 2014; Wald et al., 2009). These three phenomenological studies provide deeper insights into experiences of three groups of students in different learning environments at institutions of higher education.
Findings of these qualitative studies reveal that challenges of students with disabilities in digital learning environments are not necessarily linked to technology and accessibility only, two most common areas of research and intervention. A paradigm shift is required that is both theoretical and pedagogical - that would move the locus of the problem from a student with a disability who requires accommodation to the learning environment in which attitudinal, physical, technological and systemic barriers are removed. More qualitative research is needed to fully understand the complexity of studying online with a disability and complement of growing evidence generated in quantitative studies.
Acknowledgements This research was conducted with the financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship Program and the Wayne Perry Ed.D. Student Research Award.
References
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