Toward More Effective and Equitable Learning: Identifying Barriers and Solutions for the Future of Online Education

Abstract

The increased reliance on online education and educational technologies more generally has laid bare the need to more deeply consider how researchers, designers, and educators can improve the quality of technology-mediated learning. To address this need, more than two dozen experts from a variety of fields came together to discuss the challenges that educational technology must address in the immediate future. These experts were tasked with identifying barriers to and potential solutions for delivering high-quality and equitable online and remote education. This article examines the themes and topics that emerged from these discussions and proposes a Collaborative Framework for Accelerating Online Education. This framework highlights the need for rapid experimentation within larger design cycles as well as the coordination and cooperation of multiple stakeholders across all phases of research and development. The themes, topics, and framework that emerged from this work serve as a call to action for innovative approaches to developing and studying online education.