Abstract:

The rapid transition to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) during the COVID-19 pandemic has entailed many new challenges among the worldwide academic community, in both the techno-pedagogical and emotional aspects. This study characterize the emotional aspects of transition to ERT among lecturers in two academic colleges in Israel. The research question is: What characterizes the emotional aspects of the lecturers' transition to ERT?

The data related to the emotional aspects were collected in 'real time' – three months after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic during the transition to ERT at two academic colleges. The research sample included 318 lecturers from two academic institutions: Academic College of Education and Society (n = 203) and Academic College of Engineering (n = 115). The lecturers were requested to answer the following open-ended question: "In light of your experience, what are your insights about the transition to remote teaching?". The questionnaire was administered to the lecturers at the end of the first semester of the distance teaching.

The content analysis of the qualitative open-ended question illustrated that 39% of the responses related to the feelings of stress in distance teaching, while only 16% of the responses related to the sense of competence in distance teaching.

The content analysis of the data related to the feelings of stress yielded two main themes:
(1) sense of frustration; and
(2) sense of overburden. Analysis of the feeling of frustration theme yielded three categories:
(1) aspects related to the lecturer-student interaction; (2) aspects related to the students; and
(3) aspects related to the lecturers.

Relating to the sense of competence for distance teaching, the lecturers described two main categories:
(1) aspects related to the lecturers; and
(2) aspects related to the lecturer-student interaction.

In light of the research findings, we recommend enhancing the support of the lecturers in the emotional aspect, as well as in the techno-pedagogical aspect. This will intensify their sense of competence and reduce their sense of frustration and sense of overburden.

Keywords:

Emergency remote teaching, COVID-19 pandemic, Sense of competence, Feelings of stress, Teaching in academia.