COVID-19 forced abrupt shifts to e-learning, deepened an existing digital divide at a mid-Atlantic Historically Black College/University (HBCU), and exacerbated perennial inequity issues at HBCUs. The campus community was ill-prepared to navigate remotely due to unreliable internet service, insufficient technology, and shared spaces that were not optimal for teaching and learning. Work-life imbalances threatened the well-being of students, staff, and faculty who struggled to meet academic and professional demands amid homeschooling, caregiving, and coping with COVID-19 fatalities. By contrast, the pandemic inspired creative teaching, galvanized and humanized the campus, and evoked resilience. This chapter illuminates disparities and celebrates triumphs of HBCUs, including factors that shielded the author's university from further hardship. Readers will think critically about culturally responsive strategies to address socioeconomic and digital inequities and ensure that HBCUs are poised to meet campus needs during major crises.
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Technology is ubiquitous – it is ever present in our personal and professional lives, facilitates much of our daily experiences and makes life without it relatively unfathomable. Yet, the ability to access, connect to and fully leverage technology is hardly equitable across racial and socioeconomic lines. The digital divide is real and has been pervasive in marginalized communities for years. However, such gaps of opportunity deepened and widened in the wake of the Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) public health crisis and economically vulnerable communities, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), were stretched and strained in unprecedented ways. The struggle was also real for colleges and universities to respond to the abrupt closers of our institutions and continue to deliver a quality education to deserving, and equally devastated collegiate.
Mere availability of technology, which traditionally defined the digital divide, does not equate to digital literacy, for faculty and students, alike. The exponential growth of innovation over the past decade has also expanded the term to include the pace of innovation, diverse digital media culture and platforms, location of and connectivity to internet access. (Watkins, Lombana-Bermudez, Cho, Vickery, Shaw, & Weinzimmer, 2018). In academic settings, it also refers to generation gaps in digital skills, pedagogy, and access to instructional technology. Accordingly, the extent of digital infusion into teaching and learning is highly dependent on both faculty experience and students’ ability to leverage technology to communicate, demonstrate knowledge and competence, each of which is influenced by personal and educational attitudes and experiences.
Since their founding, HBCUs have historically done more with less -- funding, resources, infrastructure, support – this unspoken refrain is woven into the fabric of the institutions and undergirds the pride with which each has overcome considerable odds and obstacles to perennially outperform traditional institutions of higher education by producing the highest number of African-American graduates, professionals and leaders. With one-eighth of the endowment compared to Predominately White Institutions (PWIs) and myriad challenges, such as historic discrimination in funding, HBCUs invariably employ creative strategies to ensure students have valuable learning experiences despite (Thurgood Marshall College Fund, 2019). As one example, Historically Black institutions in Maryland were subjected to systemic discrimination that substantially undermined budget allocation by the state and allowed PWIs to duplicate academic programs that existed at the HBCUs which detracted from student enrollment. Fortunately, after a 15-year federal court battle, which included a coalition of four HBCUs in Maryland – Bowie State University (BSU), Coppin State University, Morgan State University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore -- was awarded a historic $577 billion dollar settlement as acknowledgment of and amelioration of this injustice. Persistent underfunding and undervaluing of HBCUs exacerbated the digital divide among its students due to the inability to secure critical resources and make essential upgrades to already insufficient infrastructures. A formal instructional technology department, for example, is a critical resource necessary to support faculty development of online and hybrid courses and effectively use the learning management system (LMS) and current educational technology. With educator’s advanced degrees and extensive teaching experience come an erroneous assumption that faculty are also fluent with and fans of technology. As COVID-19 revealed, neither is entirely accurate. Accordingly, not having an instructional technology department substantially limits the ability for the institution to execute its vision for all faculty to be 21st century ready. Such a department is critical in vetting new technologies to implement from an academic perspective, creating professional development for faculty, and supporting faculty as new technology is implemented in the classroom. For example, at one institution in the University System of Maryland (USM), the instructional technology department offers faculty an optional, yet financially incentivized mini-course which ultimately yields the construction of the online course of the instructor’s choosing. While not required, there is a financial incentive for faculty to complete the mini-course.