Has the pandemic, and consequently the need to use ICT, been a positive or stressful factor for teaching?.

Abstract

In a context in which the arrival of COVID-19 has meant an educational challenge: distance learning, it is necessary to assess whether the decision to adapt the situation to an online environment has been an opportunity to leave behind an obsolete education and whether the use of ICT as a means of teaching will finally consolidate, and it is also important to know whether this adaptation has been a stress factor for teachers who have had to change their way of teaching from one day to the next. In order to find out and give an answer to the question mentioned in the title, a small investigation was carried out among active teachers who had taught during the confinement. The aim was to compare their use of ICT before, during and after this situation and to find out the degree of stress they felt when modifying their teaching. To this end, a questionnaire was developed and disseminated using the Snowball technique and analyzed with SPSS. The results indicate that although some teachers showed levels of stress and nervousness at having to modify the way they teach their classes, the concept of ICT and its use as a medium for teaching is positive. The experience of virtual teaching has motivated them to continue using ICTs in their face-to-face classes, and they consider that the pandemic has served to consolidate them and increase their use in teaching. It seems, therefore, that ICTs have finally found their promised niche in the educational world. Likewise, although digital training is currently being promoted among teachers, it will be necessary to focus more on this type of training so that their inclusion is not considered a source of stress.