Abstract
The sudden necessity to change the method of teaching during the first
months of the COVID-19 pandemic presented academic teachers and
students with serious substantive and organizational challenges. This
mode of teaching has been often mistakenly addressed as distance
learning, which in the literature refers to a well-thought-out process of
designing and delivering courses with the use of purposefully selected
online education methods. Thus, the didactic experiences of the first
months of the pandemic should rather be described as Emergency Remote
Teaching (ERT). The term indicates the sudden and reactive nature of
didactic interactions (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, Bond, 2020). The
goal of our qualitative, exploratory study was to obtain information
on the teaching experiences of university lecturers. We were interested
both in what the respondents experienced as difficult and challenging,
and what experiences were perceived as beneficial. The aim of the study
was also to identify how lecturer’s meaning given to specific pandemic
circumstances can shape the image and attitudes towards distance le-
arning methods, which, although increasingly popular, are still hardly
used in Polish academic didactic practice. In September and October
2020, 12 partially structured online interviews were carried out with
teaching staff from various units of the University of Warsaw who
volunteered to take part in the study. During the thematic analysis of
the interviews, various themes emerged e.g. the role of the lecturer in
assisting and supporting students in the learning process in a crisis,
the importance of the university community support network for the
sense of well-being of lecturers, the importance of prior online educa-
tion experiences for effective teaching in an ERT situation, as well as
the perceived changes in didactic work. The obtained results make it
possible to understand the lecturers’ perspective on changes in higher
education didactics in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
months of the COVID-19 pandemic presented academic teachers and
students with serious substantive and organizational challenges. This
mode of teaching has been often mistakenly addressed as distance
learning, which in the literature refers to a well-thought-out process of
designing and delivering courses with the use of purposefully selected
online education methods. Thus, the didactic experiences of the first
months of the pandemic should rather be described as Emergency Remote
Teaching (ERT). The term indicates the sudden and reactive nature of
didactic interactions (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, Bond, 2020). The
goal of our qualitative, exploratory study was to obtain information
on the teaching experiences of university lecturers. We were interested
both in what the respondents experienced as difficult and challenging,
and what experiences were perceived as beneficial. The aim of the study
was also to identify how lecturer’s meaning given to specific pandemic
circumstances can shape the image and attitudes towards distance le-
arning methods, which, although increasingly popular, are still hardly
used in Polish academic didactic practice. In September and October
2020, 12 partially structured online interviews were carried out with
teaching staff from various units of the University of Warsaw who
volunteered to take part in the study. During the thematic analysis of
the interviews, various themes emerged e.g. the role of the lecturer in
assisting and supporting students in the learning process in a crisis,
the importance of the university community support network for the
sense of well-being of lecturers, the importance of prior online educa-
tion experiences for effective teaching in an ERT situation, as well as
the perceived changes in didactic work. The obtained results make it
possible to understand the lecturers’ perspective on changes in higher
education didactics in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
| Translated title of the contribution | Experiences of academic teachers at the University of Warsaw during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic : A qualitative study |
|---|---|
| Original language | Polish |
| Title of host publication | Pandemia COVID-19 |
| Subtitle of host publication | Perspektywa psychologiczna |
| Editors | Małgorzata Gambin, Bogdan Zawadzki |
| Publisher | University of Warsaw |
| Pages | 341–369 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-83-63487-60-7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Publication series
| Name | Psychological Currents. Theory and Research |
|---|---|
| Publisher | University of Warsaw |
| Volume | 3 |