How are students with disabilities accommodated in a fully online degree program?

Online degree programs are a growing part of the higher education ecosystem. Among the many challenges raised by this change is the question of whether institutions of higher education are providing comparable accommodations to students with disabilities in these online programs to those provided to in-person students. Prior research studying online courses shows that students with disabilities often struggle to obtain the accommodations to which they are entitled or perceive them to be of lower quality than in-person equivalents. This study used linear and logistic regression to analyze university administrative data at a large research university. For students in a fully online biology degree program and in the equivalent in-person degree program, we compared: (a) the frequency of registration with the disability resource center (DRC); (b) the range of specific accommodations provided; and (c) course grades for students. This work examined an online biology program because this program has been established long enough to have a track record for analysis. However, there is no reason to expect that the results are limited to biology. As online programs are developed in Earth and space sciences, it is important that administrators and faculty proactively ensure that these programs support students with disabilities in a manner that lives up to both the letter and the spirit of the laws that mandate accommodations.

Results show that online program students were nearly 30% less likely to be enrolled with the DRC and that online program students were offered a narrower range of accommodations, most notably having no access to notetaking services. However, students with disabilities in the online program did earn slightly higher grades (~0.2 on a 4-point scale) relative to their peers who were not enrolled with the DRC. While practical limitations within existing disability support systems likely explain the narrow range of accommodations, the cause(s) of the overall reduced enrollment and the higher relative grades is less clear. For some students with disabilities, the online mode may simply be a more effective learning environment. Alternatively, our data may be biased by differential DRC enrollment by those online students with the knowledge and motivation to seek out and secure this support.