Stigma Consciousness Online

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. RGC and Educational Tools

Abstract

One third of all postsecondary school students took an online course in 2011, and nearly 70% of chief academic officers at postsecondary institutions report that online learning is “critical” to their long-term strategy (Lederman 2013). While there has been much research aimed at investigating the cognitive effects of online versus traditional face-to-face learning communities, very few studies have focused on the social-psychological effects of online learning communities (OLCs) and their consequences for educational equity. Inspired by preliminary findings that online learning communities may promote educational equity by narrowing the achievement gap between academically stigmatized students and their non-stigmatized equivalents, and by scholarship on the detrimental effects of academic stigma consciousness in traditional learning communities, I hypothesize that, for traditionally stigmatized student subpopulations, academic stigma consciousness is lower in OLCs than in traditional classroom environments. Should this be the case, relevant scholarship suggests that this will lead to better learning outcomes for students and greater educational equity.

Author

• Hilary Irene Gay, University of California-San Diego