Taking the Core Online

Even though most universities by now have returned to in-person instruction after the COVID-19 pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that hybrid and fully online options are here to stay. In Canada, the demand for online courses, including online Sociology courses, remains very high. In our conversation with students, we’ve learned that online courses are attractive because they offer greater flexibility, independence, self-paced learning, and are more accommodating to students’ busy schedules. For our department, online options are appealing because we face an increasing number of sociology majors, fiscal constraints and a shrinking faculty, which together have created logistical and pragmatic challenges that can be addressed by offering classes in different modalities. This presentation discusses the benefits and limitations of offering core courses, such as Social Research Methods online. Such online courses can not only mirror in-person learning, but they can also avoid some of the barriers to learning in-person classes create and thus equalize access to education for diverse student populations. We will describe our approach to teaching the online section of Introductory Social Research Methods, which was designed with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility (EDIA) principles in mind. We will then address how students responded to the course and how they perceived their learning in this class.