Back to Basics: Quality in Digital Learning

The pandemic was, in some ways, a sneak preview of higher education’s future, one in which technology-mediated and -enabled education is ubiquitous, but with the potential for deep inequities in access to high-quality learning. This report describes some of the ways in which higher education succeeded and fell short during the remarkable 2020–21 year of distance learning. It proposes a trio of federal policy changes to build the ecosystem needed for online learning to ensure it is more equitable for students of color and low-income students, and to improve the quality for everyone (Acosta et al., 2021, p. 6).