Student Perspectives on Remote Hardware Labs and Equitable Access in a Post-Pandemic Era

RHLab: Digital Inequalities and Equitable Access in Remote Laboratories

“…(Q16). Similar to Atienza & Hussein's study [1], we used six "Factors of Equitable Access" to code the responses: "Accessibility", "Quality of Internet", "Affordability", "Ease of Use", "Convenience", and "Other factors". These codes are listed in Table 2, and the results of the coding process are depicted in Figure 11.…”

“…The loss of access to campus Wi-Fi and university devices has posed a challenge for some students, particularly those from lower-income families, who struggle with consistent internet connectivity and updating/maintaining their technological devices. This research is a continuation of a previous study [1] that analyzed the student perspective on remote hardware and equity in electrical and computer engineering education in the post-pandemic era. That previous study, which was based on a limited sample of students, revealed intriguing trends in students' perceptions of equity, which prompted us to conduct a more extensive survey, the focus of this paper.…”

“…This study presents an evaluation of students' perspectives on educational factors associated with digital inequality using both a survey and semi-structured interviews, with the survey results being reported in this paper. This work builds upon a previous study that surveyed a small sample of students in a sophomore-level digital design course on their general perspectives of equitable access and RLs [1].…”

Exploring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Remote Laboratories

“…This research serves as a follow-up to the research presented in Atienza and Hussein's [5] of the Remote Hub Lab group [6], that investigated students' perspective on equitable access using remotely accessible laboratories. The authors surveyed a small number of students and the results showed evidence that remote labs could be a viable solution for equitable access in engineering education.…”

“…The authors surveyed a small number of students and the results showed evidence that remote labs could be a viable solution for equitable access in engineering education. This study leverages the survey used in [5] with a focus on DEI and surveying a larger number of students. Additionally, we conducted another study [14] that focused on investigating digital inequalities and equitable access in remote laboratories (RLs) in engineering education.…”