Comparison of voluntary and forced digital leaps in higher education – Teachers’ experiences of the added value of using digital tools in teaching and learning

Abstract

The study examines the benefits of digital tools in teaching and learning as experienced by university teachers in two different time periods: 1) during the controlled digital leap before the Covid-19 pandemic (2017–2019) and 2) during the emergency imposition of remote teaching in response to the lockdown aimed at containing the Covid-19 pandemic (2020). Teachers in different academic fields at a large multidisciplinary Finnish university (N1 = 303 and N2 = 265) responded to two open-ended questions as part of a broader questionnaire. The research identified four kinds of benefits related to digital teaching: (1) practical and administrative and (2) independence of time and place, implying practical and technical benefits; as well as (3) enhancing learning and (4) developing teaching, which are primarily pedagogical benefits, related to teaching and learning. Voluntary and forced digital leaps provided different kinds of consequences in teaching and learning. Digital tools generally provided practical and technological benefits for teaching and learning during the controlled digital leap, but they also had positive pedagogical effects. The forced digital leap, in turn, demonstrated the value of time-and-place-independent online teaching and learning. It also exposed differences among academic fields in how teachers experienced the benefits of using digital tools. Support of and training for university teachers should take into account the different needs of faculties and disciplines, and promote dialogue between pedagogical and technological interests.

The mediating role of technostress in the relationship between social outcome expectations and teacher satisfaction: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic in music education

“…Therefore, while the emergency context was not ideal, it may have presented an opportunity for growth and development for individual educators and the field of education as a whole, as indicated by a recent study on remote education. From the perspective of educators themselves, remote education amplifies the sharing and accessibility of instructional materials, stimulates student engagement, elevates the quality of learning outcomes, streamlines course coordination, fosters the refinement of teaching and assessment techniques, and grants both students and teachers the liberty of temporal and spatial independence (Kallunki et al, 2023). The second possible consideration is related to the observation that the negative effect of social outcome expectations on technostress was no longer present among music professors who were willing to use ICT.…”

The impact of pedagogical and ICT training in teachers’ approaches to online teaching and use of digital tools

“…In addition to pedagogical training, it is important that teachers have an opportunity to be trained on the use of educational technology as the demand for online courses has grown, and adaptation for future society, e. g. working life requires equipping students with digital competence (Redecker and Punie, 2017;Kallunki et al, 2023). However, there is evidence teachers' technological training is insufficient and, it is problematic that the technological training usually lacks a pedagogical basis but focuses more on technological aspects (Fernández-Batanero et al, 2022;Kolil and Achuthan, 2022).…”