Diversity and Disconnection: Does an Online Setting Affect Student’s Understanding of Privilege, Oppression, and White Guilt?

Abstract

Should educators teach diversity courses in online formats? Courses covering sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, or homophobia are increasingly part of the curriculum requirements for college students. This study compares student surveys from six sections of the author’s introductory Diversity in Politics course; three of these sections are taught asynchronously online, and three are taught in a face-to-face setting. Results reveal no difference between online and face-to-face students’ understandings of privilege and oppression, sense of belonging, or white guilt. However, although all Republican students increased their understanding of privilege and oppression from this course, Republican students uniquely entered the course with less knowledge of oppression and experienced increased growth compared to their online counterparts. The importance of partisanship suggests a more student-centered approach can be valuable in determining the transmissibility of online diversity courses and provides evidence for a successful model for political science diversity courses in online and in-person spaces.

Keywords:

• Diversity courses
• online learning
• class environment

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge student researcher Cameron Deshanko for his assistance in compiling and cleaning the data as well as thank Clinton Jenkins and Patrick Bond for their helpful feedback for this project. Additionally, I would also like to thank Ashlie Delshad for sharing her prior work with Fauke Schnell on diversity classes at our university.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This research was approved by the IRB00005030 Institutional Review Board, number IRB-FY2022-20.

2 A copy of both syllabi are located in the Supplementary Appendix Sections D and E.

3 A copy of the survey instrument pre-course and post-course are located in the Supplementary Appendix Sections A and B.

4 Some of these scales needed to be updated to correspond with changing understanding of different identities. For example, rather than utilizing the phrase “homosexuals” in Case’s heterosexual awareness privilege scale, I replaced the term with LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer). Additionally, for the gender privilege awareness scale, I added two questions that directly asked about cisgender/transgender or nonbinary privilege. These questions are modeled after Case’s original questions for consistency.

5 I removed two questions originally used by Kernahan due to concern that Kernahan’s original questions could be misinterpreted.

6 See Supplementary Appendix Section C for comparison data of survey respondents.

7 I utilize standard deviations rather than standard errors in these figures because I am dealing with a mean sum of scaled questions, and consequently do not have a large enough count to utilize standard errors while accounting for location and timing.

8 Results from a Welch Two Sample t-test of pre-levels of understanding for Republican students reveal a group mean for Republicans of 2.88, Democrats of 5.02, and a p-value of 0.027, suggesting a statistically significant difference between the pre-levels of understanding between Democratic and Republican students.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shannon McQueen

Shannon McQueen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at West Chester University. Her research focuses on the importance and influence of women’s involvement in politics, the mobilization of women’s groups, and the institutional, cultural, and policy obstacles women face when running for office. Additionally, she is engaged in scholarship concerning internships, civic engagement, and metacognition in the classroom. She previously received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Politics and Public Policy from George Washington University and holds a B.A. in Political Science and English from Saint Michael’s College.