Higher education has seen steady increases in online enrollments over the last two decades, with the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically shifting that trend into high gear. While online education has been touted by many as a strategy for equitable access to higher education (Allen, Poulin, & Straut, 2016) there has been some evidence that points to disparities in academic outcomes such as course completion between online and face-to-face students overall, and between and among historically underserved student populations (Johnson & Cuellar Mejia, 2014; Xu & Jaggars, 2016).

While the research has been mixed on the effectiveness of online education on student learning and outcomes, the California Community College (CCC) system has invested a considerable amount of resources to improve the quality of online courses and reduce equity gaps in those courses. One such investment is in professional development for CCC instructors through state investments such as the California Virtual Campus-Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) and through local college efforts to improve the quality of online instruction and learning. 

This project was made possible by funding from the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) under Grant #R305A210455 awarded to the University of California, Davis.