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It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020

The summer semester had just begun at Austrian and German universities when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thus, in March 2020, all universities closed their campuses, switching to distance learning within the span of about a single day. How did lecturers h...

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Autores principales: Feldhammer-Kahr, Martina, Tulis, Maria, Leen-Thomele, Eline, Dreisiebner, Stefan, Macher, Daniel, Arendasy, Martin, Paechter, Manuela
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292608/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34305711
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638898
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author Feldhammer-Kahr, Martina
Tulis, Maria
Leen-Thomele, Eline
Dreisiebner, Stefan
Macher, Daniel
Arendasy, Martin
Paechter, Manuela
author_facet Feldhammer-Kahr, Martina
Tulis, Maria
Leen-Thomele, Eline
Dreisiebner, Stefan
Macher, Daniel
Arendasy, Martin
Paechter, Manuela
author_sort Feldhammer-Kahr, Martina
collection PubMed
description The summer semester had just begun at Austrian and German universities when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thus, in March 2020, all universities closed their campuses, switching to distance learning within the span of about a single day. How did lecturers handle the situation? Were they still able to turn the situation into a positive one? What were the main obstacles with this difficult situation, and where there conditions which helped them to overcome the new challenges? These are research questions of the present survey with a sample of 1,152 lecturers at universities in Austria and Germany. The survey focuses on the lecturers’ appraisals of the novel situation as challenging or threatful. These appraisals are important for approaching a situation or shying away from it. However, how well a person adjusts to a novel situation is also influenced by personal and environmental resources which help to overcome the situation. The present survey focused on four possible sources of influence: internal assessments of the situation determining it to be threatening and/or challenging, personal resources, attitudes, and support by the organization. It was investigated to which degree these sources of influence could contribute to the lecturers’ satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with their teaching processes. A multiple regression with three criterion variables describing university lecturers’ perceived satisfaction with distance teaching was carried out. Predictor variables were the lecturers’ appraisals of challenge and threat, perceived support by the university and sense of belonging to the university, temporal resources, proficiency in using digital technologies, length of teaching experience, and gender. Lecturers were mostly satisfied with their teaching activities. Together with the perception of a low threat potential, challenge appraisals contributed strongest to satisfaction. In comparison, assessments of actual personal resources, skills in the use of digital technologies, teaching experience, and temporal resources were important but contributed less to satisfaction than challenge appraisals. It seems that lecturers were only able to use these resources when the technological resources were available and when the lecturers were confident in their technical abilities.
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spelling pubmed-82926082021-07-22 It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020 Feldhammer-Kahr, Martina Tulis, Maria Leen-Thomele, Eline Dreisiebner, Stefan Macher, Daniel Arendasy, Martin Paechter, Manuela Front Psychol Psychology The summer semester had just begun at Austrian and German universities when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thus, in March 2020, all universities closed their campuses, switching to distance learning within the span of about a single day. How did lecturers handle the situation? Were they still able to turn the situation into a positive one? What were the main obstacles with this difficult situation, and where there conditions which helped them to overcome the new challenges? These are research questions of the present survey with a sample of 1,152 lecturers at universities in Austria and Germany. The survey focuses on the lecturers’ appraisals of the novel situation as challenging or threatful. These appraisals are important for approaching a situation or shying away from it. However, how well a person adjusts to a novel situation is also influenced by personal and environmental resources which help to overcome the situation. The present survey focused on four possible sources of influence: internal assessments of the situation determining it to be threatening and/or challenging, personal resources, attitudes, and support by the organization. It was investigated to which degree these sources of influence could contribute to the lecturers’ satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with their teaching processes. A multiple regression with three criterion variables describing university lecturers’ perceived satisfaction with distance teaching was carried out. Predictor variables were the lecturers’ appraisals of challenge and threat, perceived support by the university and sense of belonging to the university, temporal resources, proficiency in using digital technologies, length of teaching experience, and gender. Lecturers were mostly satisfied with their teaching activities. Together with the perception of a low threat potential, challenge appraisals contributed strongest to satisfaction. In comparison, assessments of actual personal resources, skills in the use of digital technologies, teaching experience, and temporal resources were important but contributed less to satisfaction than challenge appraisals. It seems that lecturers were only able to use these resources when the technological resources were available and when the lecturers were confident in their technical abilities. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-07-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8292608/ /pubmed/34305711 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638898 Text en Copyright © 2021 Feldhammer-Kahr, Tulis, Leen-Thomele, Dreisiebner, Macher, Arendasy and Paechter. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Feldhammer-Kahr, Martina
Tulis, Maria
Leen-Thomele, Eline
Dreisiebner, Stefan
Macher, Daniel
Arendasy, Martin
Paechter, Manuela
It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020
title It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020
title_full It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020
title_fullStr It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020
title_full_unstemmed It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020
title_short It’s a Challenge, Not a Threat: Lecturers’ Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Summer Semester of 2020
title_sort it’s a challenge, not a threat: lecturers’ satisfaction during the covid-19 summer semester of 2020
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292608/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34305711
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638898
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