Centering Equity and Quality in Online, Blended, and Digital Learning

This case study evaluates the Online Learning Consortium’s (OLC’s) five pillars of Quality Online Education – learning effectiveness, scale, access, faculty satisfaction, and student satisfaction – against equity criteria. The authors argue that the pillars could more effectively mobilize equity and quality for a range of stakeholders in the field of online, blended, and digital learning. The study addresses two primary questions: how the OLC pillars surface the relationship between quality and equity in online, blended, and digital learning, and how these pillars can be situated within the field’s current practices of designing, facilitating, and evaluating equitable and sustainable education in digital learning environments. The review process followed a case study approach informed by autoethnographic principles and involved reflecting on the pillars’ role in the current context of online learning. The findings highlight the need to differentiate between disparate definitions of online, blended, and digital learning to embrace both quality and equity, provide a set of guiding principles to support the variety of contexts within which instructors and learners pursue sustainable and equitable educational experiences, and focus on learning effectiveness that prioritizes learners meeting articulated outcomes and gaining relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities.