Abstract:

The coronavirus pandemic has created significant challenges for the global higher education community. Indeed, the shift to online education has a significant impact on the mental and physical well-being of students (Raaper and Brown, 2020). During confinement (March 2020-May 2020) students have been forced to move from face-to-face to online teaching and, following confinement, to a dual system with the prospect of continuing for at least one academic year. Although distance learning (in its many forms) is not typical of the University of Alicante, legislation and the gradual extension of restrictions for educational institutions are in the focus of attention of users, education providers, different national and/or sub-national public institutions, local, regional and national governments, as well as society as a whole. All this leads to the need to rethink and redesign university teaching in the new post-Covid-19 normality. Indeed, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of experience, enjoyment (understood as the extent to which the activity of applying any system is perceived as enjoyable, regardless of the consequences of use), ICT anxiety (anxious or emotional reactions when trying to perform any activity on different electronic devices such as tablet, laptop, etc.) and self-efficacy (perception of their ability to perform a particular task using electronic devices) on students' acceptance of the change from face-to-face to dual teaching system in university education. This tolerance is differentiated by gender (or sex in case of lack of information) and also compares according to the university degree in which they are enrolled, as well as their characteristics, their level of motivation and the learning styles employed.

There is no doubt that the forced shift from traditional (face-to-face) education to online/dual education is a great challenge not only for students, but also for teachers. Communication/interaction during synchronous sessions is considerably reduced and the pace of the sessions ends up being faster, which could end up having a negative impact on the learning process of the students. In order to analyse the students' tolerance to the educational changes caused by the pandemic, a specific questionnaire has been elaborated focusing on the UA students' tolerance to the transition policy from face-to-face teaching to dual teaching, in particular, in order to find out whether (and to what extent) they accept the IT communication tools applied by the University for dual education as well as their preference for a face-to-face or dual system and possible improvements. The survey was addressed to students in the second year of International Trade (28218) of the International Relations degree and to students of Global Economics (22011) of the Dual Degree in Law and Business Administration and Management, both subjects corresponding to the second semester. The quantitative analysis carried out by applying empirical methods seeks to identify student tolerance and the extent to which the new teaching system is accepted. This could facilitate the design of specific methods for the learning process for dual teaching, differentiating by gender and grade. On the other hand, it could lead to collaborations between educational institutions at different levels in order to mitigate the possible intolerance that could be observed, by university grade and/or gender.

Keywords:

Covid-19, adjustment, higher education, dual teaching, student´s tolerance.