Distance learning, digital inequality, and COVID-19: Visualizing learning channels among California public school students

COVID-19 has put a spotlight not only on digital inequalities but on the formation of digital skills. With the pandemic, the abrupt transition of schools to distance learning in continues to underscore the key importance of digital skills for students who will increasingly need digital skills to navigate new educational terrains and adapt to its demands. This study examines fundamental issues in the formation of digital skills and argues that access to the Internet and digital devices are insufficient if students lack digital skills to use them and benefit from them. To explain why we analyze the relationships and learning channels that are central to students acquisition of digital skills. We examine the interrelationships between four essential “channels” through which students acquire digitals skills: through self direction; through peers; through family; and through formal instruction and interaction with teachers. Drawing from original survey and interview data among disadvantaged secondary school students, we employ configurational and narrative methods to explore how the four learning channels map onto the formation of four key Internet skills (Internet search, Internet-mediated school research, multimedia, and social media). The study’s findings shed light on the ways that self-instruction, the primary learning channel, articulates with the other learning channels. Findings show that school-related research skills are best developed through educator-led instruction, while multimedia and social media skills can be developed through the combination of instruction on the part of peers and family members as long as the learning is simultaneously self-directed. Finally, these findings help explain why remote learning has been inadequate for some low-SES students during the pandemic. As we show, these students could not fully benefit from self-instruction due to the lack of family members or peers who could teach them digital skills. When coupled with disenfranchisement from educator instruction, these students could not acquire the digital skills necessary for them to engage in informed self-instruction and skill development