 Good afternoon everybody, welcome to this session. The title is The Impact of the online transition on staff digital well-being in a UK institution. Our speaker today is Professor Paul Hollins and I'll hand you over to him now and I hope you enjoyed the session. Thank you. Thank you, Louise. Good afternoon. Some of you may know me, some of you won't, but I'm Paul Hollins, I'm Professor of Cultural Research Development at the University of Bolton. That's my new life, my former life was very, very much in educational technology. I'm going to talk a little bit about the impact of the online transition on, I'm not sure whether it is digital well-being, I think it's well-being in a UK institution. Those that undertook the study, myself, Dr. Sarah Talfa, Daniel Edmondson and Professor Dye Griffiths who was formerly at the University of Bolton as Professor of Educational Cybernetics. The coronavirus disease commonly referred to as COVID-19 pandemic caused the university in common with much of the sector to re-evaluate its pedagogic practice and specifically the use of technology. The first first of the teaching transition occurred as a direct result of the government's lockdown of UK institutions and I think best characterised as and what we would call an emergency teaching phase. This then involved into a second phase which involved the embellishment and improvement of our online pedagogic practices. The study was undertaken to gain insight and understanding of the impact these changes had on tutors and their teaching practice, their relationship with the institution and their personal disposition and development and the kind of institutional support provided through the transition. A mixed methods approach was deployed with primary data gathered through a voluntary staff survey and self-selected focus groups. This is ongoing work and our full data will be published shortly. The transition to online teaching had a profound effect on the welfare and teaching practice of our tutors, a significant number of whom had previously only had very limited engagement with educational technology or online learning. These changes prompted the institution and individual tutors to re-evaluate what constitutes an authentic student experience within the learning process. The team adopted a phenomenological approach to the research in developing six principal research questions. All staff across four faculties and schools were invited to participate anonymously in the survey and our response rate was quite high in the region of 25% of all those faculty members invited, which in numerical terms would be over 100. Our focus was unapologetically on teaching staff, their experience and their response to transition. Other studies in UAB were focused on learners and their response. Who did we ask? Well, we asked the School of Art and Design, the Faculty of Professional Studies, the Faculty of Health and Well-Being and all of our work was approved by UAB Ethics, where all volunteers and all responses in the first phase of the research were anonymous. Our questions, after undertaking what was at the time an evolving and emergent body of literature, our principal research questions emerged. These being, what was the impact of the transition to online learning? What was the impact of the transition to online teaching on University of Bolton personal staff welfare? What was the impact of the online transition on individual staff's relationship with educational technology? What was the impact of the online transition on individual staff and their interactions with peers and with students? What was the impact of the online transition on individual staff in respect of their teaching practice? And how did the University of Bolton staff feel they were supported by the University in making the transition to online teaching? A structured questionnaire consisted of 30 questions including both like-out-scale response questions and open responses was developed and distributed to all volunteers. This was followed by a series of in-depth interviews with several focus groups from across the faculties of the University. The focus groups were drawn from volunteers. Just a little bit of context here, the UOB workforce and student population are one of the most ethnically diverse in the UK and female staff make up a higher proportion of the employees in the University across all of the facilities. We were therefore not surprised that those declaring a gender in our survey 57% were female and 40% male which broadly represented the workforce breakdown. What did emerge however were quite distinct responses and distinctions in responses between male and female staff and I'll talk about some of these distinctions a little later. The later focus groups established also consisted of a much higher representation of females over 90%. Without delving into too much detail within this presentation that's not untypical within our sector. Research tells us, research by Paterson et al. that females seem to be more willing to participate in wider research. This is something we believe we should perhaps look at in the future. The response rate was much higher in the Faculty of Health where a higher proportion of female staff are located and well-being and lowest in business and the arts. Though I guess it's conjecture to speculate why this would be so. And what did we find? Well that's Flash my lurcher and any excuse to put a nice picture of a dog in a presentation. Flash is very very good at finding things particularly rabbits. The survey responses provide us with primary data and I'll focus on the results and the aspect of that work this afternoon. How much richer qualitative data provided by the focus group has yet to be fully evaluated so be a bit premature for me to talk too much about that in this presentation. 75% of our respondents describe themselves as being experienced or indeed very experienced in the general sense teachers with less than 10% describing themselves as inexperienced. And what did this say about their job satisfaction during lockdown? 61% of respondents declared that their job satisfaction had worsened deteriorated to varying degrees. With females much more likely to experience the deterioration in job satisfaction over that period. I'll talk here about perceptions of isolation and I've included one of our findings. Those educators declared themselves experienced were more likely to experience deteriorating job satisfaction. Open comments highlighted the lack of human interaction as a contributing factor in this deterioration with again females feeling much more isolated than males by their experience. This is one of our findings in front of you. Consistently across the schools health and well-being faculty members experience more isolation than in other schools this could be due to a high proportion of female staffs or due to the nature of the work expectations of that particular cohort of what our practitioner led tutors. And what did staff feel about the expectations the institution placed on them? Most felt actually felt quite clear about what was expected of them by senior management in respect of the transition and this had to be and was well communicated. And what did they feel about the transition to online? Well 70% of our respondents declared themselves really comfortable with teaching online with only 4% being uncomfortable. There was no real bias or variance in gender with those particular findings. And what aspects of the transition concerned our tutors most? 45% of respondents interestingly believed administration processes had become increasingly difficult though there was recognition of the efforts of those in Q&A to best support students in their learning experience within the institution. And what about technology? 62% respondents enjoyed using technology within their teaching and only 1% declared and I quote they would avoid using technology if they could. There was a little distinction between the response there was little distinction between response of female and male staff in this respect. Privately and positively comments suggested that the enforced elements of lockdown had offered staff both quote time and the creative space to explore digital tools for education due to the compulsory requirement to find new means and methods and pedagogic approaches. Staff responses indicated they were no longer able to and I quote avoid using IT and that quote again being pushed into it had indeed helped them. Positive response indicated online meetings and communication between staff and teams had improved and the number had increased with more regular contact with administration staff meetings and improve admin processes though problematic as I previously highlighted. However 66% of our respondents declared that the time in preparation for lectures and teaching had increased markedly during the online transition compared to more conventional face-to-face teaching and concerns were raised focused on communication increased email traffic causing delayed staff responses written communication appearing more abrupt than spoken. No access to office phones resulted in staff using their own mobile phones and devices highlighting dissatisfaction by staff being required to use not only their home phones their home equipment and technologies to support learning. This was exacerbated in some circumstances by poor home technologies and poor internet connections and the perceived expectations assumptions of senior management that all staff had high quality tools and connectivity which in truth they didn't. Comment from an experienced member of staff highlighted the challenges that we were still finding our feet having previously relied on having experienced colleagues sat with us around us to answer our more routine questions they were not there. Staff were in neutral in terms of the impact they felt or they perceived the transition had had on their students moving forward with their studies perhaps surprisingly staff felt supported during the transition surprising given their earlier comments on job satisfaction. Zoom was the most unsurprisingly software used and staff had observed that this technology some students were more confident speaking up online than in the traditional classroom it was a verb that students adapting to the transition and becoming more comfortable as sessions went on. Response indicating that staff felt some students would prefer online learning and others would not due to the lack of interaction the factor in these distinctions being the students confidence and their own digital literacy skills. Staff also observed and perceived and I make no comment on this given the research that is out there these were our findings that their younger students were notably more and I quote tech savvy and comfortable with online platforms. Old students seemed to struggle I'm not opening the native and immigrants old chestnut there here we know this is a very complex question and it wasn't the primary focus of my research. So question one in short the transition to online learning resulted in a marked decrease in job satisfaction amongst lecturers and female staff in particular these responses indicate due to more personal individual issues lack of technical equipment space to work personal home circumstances child care commitments distraction from other household members and children being forced to develop and learn new digital literacy skills for teaching online and the extensive pressure key workers subject areas such in health and education felt they were continuing their practice while working coordinating work placements for students in the NHS the schools and colleges the impact of the pandemic itself on staff mental health will have been we believe a significant contributing factor. Two as in question one staff personal welfare deteriorated markedly during the lockdown this is consistent with other more general research undertaken with the wider population suffice to say the pressure to continue to provide a high quality education experience in lockdown for learners was clearly felt by staff. Three on the whole staff both male and female felt the transition had prompted them to use technology in their teaching when conventionally they may not may have not the imposition of technology quote had helped staff quickly improve their technical and online pedagogic skills through necessity and provided focus on the affordances of technologies in teaching learning staff believe that their understanding and relationship with technology had improved markedly over the period. Question four interestingly staff indicated that some instance interactions had improved in the online environment with some students flourishing in the transition while for others did struggle as highlighted students suggested age as a differential factor though this would require much further investigation before any conclusive comment on this could be made on individual staff. Consistently we recognize the pattern of positivity that had run through the responses indicating that the majority staff have a positive outlook towards the use of both blended and wholly online teaching however exceptions to this positivity came from staff who experienced a negative experience towards their own job satisfaction but these responses indicated due more to personal and individual circumstances I mentioned earlier including lack of technical equipment and space to work and home circumstances then support by the institution. Question six how did individual University of Bolton staff feel they were supported by the university it was clear staff on the whole felt supported by the university and their line managers they overwhelmingly presented support and clarity around the expectations of the future in its current circumstances however didn't mean that staff all felt the same due to limited our limited sample size over 100 from across the institution but the sample size does reflect a good representation of the demographic of the university in terms of gender and staff to student ratios data indicates that inexperienced staff felt much more isolated and so moving forward required more support with their online teaching in comparison to those more experienced teachers who indicated on the whole a positive response with regard to the development of their digital skills this finding is support by florist 2020 work on online teaching suggesting a comprehensive review of pedagogy of online education to utilize technology more effectively to support remote teaching and learning such reviews would include the following recommendations structured institutional processes to support and train new and experienced staff on remote teaching and delivery and digital literary skills reflection upon the role that online and distance education we're playing moving forward learning from the better practices which emerged during lockdown the possible evolution of hybrid blended models of teaching delivery creating new prototype for a g requiring new scissors and ship skills institutional inclusion procedures to combat digital poverty promoting social inclusion equality and diversity continued exploration of more online non-traditional assessment methods and procedures consideration of how to implement best practice and resilience in effective factors such as mental health and well-being and promoting positive behavior online for both the teachers and students well followed our initials work has been a series of focus groups I haven't got time to talk about that work here though I'd like to and we're currently analyzing that data staff will be asked to complete the survey again in semester one this year when perhaps the extent of the long transition in inverted commas may be examined further thank you for your time and attention all the images used are free of copyright including flash the dog that's my email address and that's my Twitter account and I think I'm spot on time thank you Louise thank you very much Paul for a insightful and really interesting presentation lots of information for us to think about there I apologize that my camera's off my connection seems to be a bit sunny so we've got time for questions in the chat please post there I've I've actually got a question because if that's okay to bring that one in to start with you met the regarding the focus groups that you mentioned at the end Paul you said that you didn't have time but it looks as if we might have a a minute or two for you to say a little bit about about that if you'd like to yeah well we our focus groups we were quite surprised within the questionnaire we asked those that would be willing to volunteer to be part of program pro and the focus groups moving forward and as I mentioned over 90 percent of those folks focus groups were made up of female staff which we found really quite surprising given the 57 40 odd percent breakdown of staff there now the focus groups pretty much end all star are our findings and certainly the findings of the questionnaire it was quite interesting actually that I even prompted those focus groups to talk off the record given that there are an anonymity had been lost participating within the focus groups and we still had very little in terms of negative comment about the institutional support so I kind of with with the work that we're doing we do feel it's kind of full of contradictions and and so again evaluating this is going to be quite problematic they're saying on the one hand that the institution supported them and they felt quite good about things and yet clearly there were issues with their own health and well-being during the lockdown period so I think we need to examine that in much greater detail before I could make anything conclusive there and yes it is contradictory thank you very much Paul we also have a question from Pete which I think will come up on the screens you might be able to see it but I'll read it anyway the gender difference of feelings of isolation was quite shocking and we'll continue to some degree post-pandemic while if we hybrid work we work yeah what do you think we can do about this well that's that's a big question and I'm not in the senior management there we'll see our findings here but I guess the policies in terms I would describe as inclusive working policies that are more flexible that allow tutors to consider such things as childcare commitments domestic commitments and provide a workplace that is conducive to those kind of demands that predominantly are female staff members experience in an ideal world those commitments would be shared but I don't think it's within the scope of my study to to take on that particular challenge but I think the institution can be conscious of the difficulties and be flexible in terms of how we approach teaching in the future I mean what I have found actually which is a little concerning is a year on I'm not as positive about the next bit of research that we'll do because I'm not sure that now we're returning to more on-campus provision that we've actually learned very much we seem to be as an institution going back to the old pre-lockdown practices and behaviors and that's concerning thank you very much and sorry there's a question thanks very much Paul there's a question from Tim here who says thanks for the recommendations a couple of minutes ago he just asked if they're written down somewhere or could they put on discords because didn't manage to get them so if that's possible and then Tim has another question so one of the recommendations is around the importance of staff induction Tim agrees and asks how have you addressed this or followed this through well again with a little bit of hesitancy given that this is a recorded session I don't see a great deal of evidence that this has been fully taken on board moving forward I think we've got a little bit of a struggle to work with our senior management to recognize and to change policy through what we've learned there does seem to be a view that in fact a a dictate from the university is that no more than 20 percent of our teaching is to be online and given the high the predominance of COVID infection in Bolton I'm pretty confident that we're going to get between 20 and 30 percent of our students self-isolating and so access for those students when we're not recording sessions when we're not or we haven't learned from the lockdown I think is potentially problematic so I'd like to say they've implemented all our recommendations and the world will be a better place unfortunately I've got concerns about that thanks very much yeah there's a comment praise for your the pictures in your in your room digging the picture of the skull in the background yeah so I think yeah we've got one minute left so there is an opportunity for a final question if anybody there's plenty of praise coming through there for example Tim says interesting thanks Paul robust induction training is persistently challenging area definitely yeah okay well thank you very much I'm I'll finish by thanking Paul very much very interesting session as has been noted in the chat and thank you very everybody for for joining thank you