Five years ago online classes were touted as a way to give disadvantaged students equal access to a quality education, but recent research from the Pew Research Center shows that the online learning model has not lived up to the hype. As an article in The Atlantic is titled, virtual classrooms can be as unequal as real ones. Two of the biggest barriers are a lack of digital skills and the lack of confidence in one’s own ability to find trustworthy information on the internet.