Public Administration Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Teaching Experiences and Policy Implications

Abstract

Although multiple studies focused on the effects that the Covid-19 pandemic had on students and the strategies adopted for dealing with the effects, few authors looked at what was on the other side of the educational process – teachers. The pandemic had the same influence on teachers as it had on any other social or professional group, leading to increased levels of stress, insomnia, anxiety, uncertainty, fatigue or burnout. However, even faced with these issues, educators had to continue their activity and adapt at a moment’s notice to a different paradigm of doing their job and shift from on-site to online teaching. The current qualitative research looks at the multiple effects the public health crisis had on professors in terms of personal and professional life. The paper reviews the measures adopted by educators to adapt to online education, ranging from updates of the course Syllabuses, educational contents, new evaluation methods, video services, and educational platforms used, to communicate and motivate students or the positive and negative facets of e-learning. The interview guide also includes elements related to the future of teaching PA in the post Covid-19 era, the sustainability of online education, and the prospects of returning to the previous paradigm. The empirical research was conducted using semi-structured interviews, the respondents being educators from the Public Administration programs of Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Male and female respondents (N=19) ranged from PhD students at the beginning of their teaching activity to full professors with more than two decades of experience. The lessons derived from the Covid-19 pandemic are useful for understanding how universities as a whole and professors in particular deal with the uncertainties and turbulence generated by crises, focusing on systemic and individual resilience.