The Impacts of COVID-19 on Technological and Polytechnic University Teachers

Abstract

University teachers have adapted to different situations during the development of distance learning due to the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. This study was conducted by assigning a data collection instrument to 993 teachers who are part of 15 technological universities (TUs) and 7 polytechnic universities (PUs) to determine how they were affected by COVID-19. The questions asked were related to the social, economic, academic, emotional, and health effects experienced. The results show that 63% of the teachers working online complained that online teaching invaded their family privacy; 56% pointed out that working from home and the virtual classes affected their performance as teachers; 90% of the teachers thought that they dedicated too much extra to preparing for their classes; 15% were stressed; 4% felt negative under the new teaching scheme of virtual classes; finally, 38% of the teachers stated that repeated interaction with electronic devices had a lot of negative impacts on their emotional wellbeing. By means of a G-test, it was determined that gender was independent from the studied effects. Through a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), it was determined that, of the total number of teachers who responded to the questionnaire, half were comfortable with the online teaching model and the other half were not. The most impacted effects were the economic, training and connectivity independently from the gender.