Workloads and Emotional Factors Derived from the Transition towards Online and/or Hybrid Teaching among Postgraduate Professors: Review of the Lessons Learned

Abstract

The objective of the present study was to discover which tasks resulted in a higher workload, leading to a higher anxiety of postgraduate professors at different Ibero-American universities, when dealing with the transition from face-to-face teaching to a virtual one. A questionnaire was constructed that was completed by 125 professors once validated. The results showed that with respect to tasks that required a higher workload, the professors had to re-think methodological strategies and activities, correct the student’s work, provide tutoring, and search for materials. As for the degree of anxiety, it was higher, given the increased number of hours in front of the computer, the lack of immediate feedback from the students, the feeling of not reaching all the students, having to look for activities to invigorate the online classes, and the need to prepare more materials and the assessment tasks. The results were the same irrespective of the university, thereby enabling us to conclude that this phenomenon was globalized, and the workload and anxiety were replicated in different contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to implement formative proposals that help manage online or hybrid teaching, beyond the mere transfer of the face-to-face teaching models to virtual ones.

Keywords

• workload
• anxiety
• university
• postgraduate professors
• Ibero-American
• online teaching