Digital Equity

This event featured Stephen Than, 2023 - 2024 Doctoral Student AT Equity Fellow, giving the keynote presentation: Part-Time CSUN Faculty’s Experience with Canvas During Their First Semester, as well as faculty presentations, and the AI Jam Award Ceremony.

To learn more about Stephen, visit the Doctoral Student AT Equity Fellow page.

The event will also highlighted efforts on digital equity at CSUN, scholarly projects, and AI in digital teaching.
 

This event featured Guadalupe Cardona, 2022 - 2023 Doctoral Student AT Equity Fellow, as well as faculty presentations, and the App Jam Award Ceremony. 

It also highlighted efforts on digital equity at CSUN, scholarly projects, and pros and cons of AI in digital teaching. To learn more and register for the event, visit the CSUN Digital Equity Day 2023 page. 

The first CSUN Digital Equity Day took place on Friday, April 22, 2022. The event was held in HyFlex format (in-person and online), and featured Autumn Fabricant, our Doctoral Student AT Equity Fellow, who presented on her research project: Digital Equity and Validation: Exploring the CSUCCESS Program and First-Year Student Experiences at CSUN.

Northridge, California, November 2021 - Academic Technology has been awarded a CSUN Diversity & Equity Innovation grant as part of the program established “to support educational projects, scholarly research, creative activities and other programmatic initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, anti-racism and social justice for the benefit of the CSUN community."

The grant proposal, titled "Disseminating the Keys to Digital Equity: The CSUN Digital Grapevine," presents a plan to help improve the digital literacy skills of CSUN students by engaging student ambassadors. By leveraging social media platforms and YouTube, student ambassadors will create and share timely and relevant equity-minded content on the use of technology. According to Buzzetto-Hollywood et al. (2018), digital literacy is a barrier to success for underserved students.

The proposed model of Digital Equity Ambassadors will allow students to learn organically from their peers and empower them to seek help. This research-based model targets students who are in the most need of technology-based content to help fill in the digital literacy gaps. Research demonstrates that resources and programs created with the intention of targeting underserved audiences have a larger impact across the board, including the general audience (Thayer, 2000).  An article from EDUCAUSE suggests that institutional leaders should focus their student success efforts on student leader inclusion. The peer-to-peer ambassador model cultivates leadership and encourages students to connect with each other.

The CSUN Digital Grapevine will create resources with that specific underserved audience in mind. Moreover, this project intentionally builds upon Yosso’s (2005) ideas on community cultural wealth as it will empower students to use social and navigational wealth to engage with technology.

References

Buzzetto-Hollywood, N., Hwei Wang, Elobeid, M., & Elobaid Red Rug, M. (2018). Addressing Information Literacy and the Digital Divide in Higher Education. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning & Learning Objects, 14, 77–93. https://doi-org.libproxy.csun.edu/10.28945/4029

Thayer, Paul B. Retention of Students from First Generation and Low Income Backgrounds. Washington, DC: Council for Opportunity in Education, 2000. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED446633.

Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race ethnicity and education 8(1), pp. 69-91.

CSUN's Office of Academic Technology in collaboration with the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, and the Research and Sponsored Programs office, are excited to announce Stephen Than, CC23 Educational Leadership Cohort, as the 2023 Doctoral Student Academic Technology Equity Fellow! 

CSUN's Office of Academic Technology in collaboration with the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, and the Research and Sponsored Programs office, are excited to announce Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, CC21 Educational Leadership Cohort, as the 2022 Doctoral Student Academic Technology Equity Fellow! Visit the Doctoral Student Academic Technology Equity Fellowship page to learn more.