How did the Covid crisis impact the work of academics?

Abstract

The Covid-19 outbreak has forced universities to suspend traditional face-to-face lectures and abruptly move to online education delivery. Academics had to continue their work and fulfill their missions even though facing difficult circumstances. The perspectives of seventeen academics belonging to two Management schools from different countries on the aftermath of the pandemic were collected. By combining scientific literature with empirically grounded data based on qualitative interviews, we discovered that the academic profession is undergoing an important change. Our results show that during the pandemic, when remote teaching used to be mandatory, new responsibilities were added to the traditional roles of teachers. They had to gain technical expertise and facilitate the adaptation of students to online lessons. After the pandemic, academics had to face an enormous demand of students for maintaining a hybrid system of education consisting of providing both face-to-face courses and recordings. Research activities have also been impacted during the pandemic and beyond it. Furthermore, researchers were faced with a lack of interpersonal contact and the problem of data collection through observation. While the problem of interpersonal communication faded when the pandemic drew its conclusions, research through observation remained problematic. Previous scientific literature on the topic approaches this topic from a quantitative perspective. Our qualitative study complements existing literature by exploring challenges encountered by academics in- depth. Additionally, we evaluate the post-pandemic situation and medium- to long-term effects of the crisis on academics.