The platformisation of student engagement: a mixed-methods study of digital inequality and institutional barriers in Chinese higher education

During the early months of 2020, in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, it became necessary for higher education programmes to undergo a rapid and extensive transition to fully remote online formats (Bond et al., 2020). These formats differ fundamentally from systematically designed online learning with regard to design intent and implementation contexts (Hodges et al., 2020). In the context of Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT), research has indicated that a significant proportion of students encountered persistent network connectivity issues and technical malfunctions (Means & Neisler, 2021).