 Hello everybody and welcome to another morning session online. Hope you're enjoying the conference so far. Today our speaker is Paul Hollins from the University of Bolton and Paul will be giving his talk on the impact of the online digital transition on staff wellbeing in higher education. And this session aims to give an insight into the effects of the pandemic on staff wellbeing, building on research into a reevaluation of pedagogy and ed tech in the transition to online. There's going to be five minutes at the end for Paul to answer your questions, so please do put those in the chat. And without further ado, I'll hand you over to Paul. Good morning and thanks for choosing to attend this online session this morning. Very professionally introduced. Firstly, I'd like to thank, rather than at the end of the beginning, colleagues that worked with me on this project. And that is Dr. Sarah Telfer, Dan Edmondson, and from the University of Ryokka, Professor Dye Griffiths, and those that know me will know that Dye was at the University of Bolton for some time. The project is located in the School of Education and Psychology. And when we commenced our research, we hadn't really anticipated or designed it to be a longitudinal study, which is what it's become. Initially, our thoughts were focused on a short and very sharp survey to ascertain levels of staff confidence and capabilities in digital and online pedagogies, with a view to providing support to staff transitioning, many in truth for the first time in Bolton, to online pedagogies, in what was in effect an emergency institutional response, common with many other organisations, to the closure of campuses and a requirement to provide teaching through lockdown. If you can cast your mind back a couple of years ago, all higher educations were presented with a real challenge. And many organisations had different levels of maturity in online provision and pedagogies. It would differ greatly across the sector. And I think it'd be fair to say that in Bolton, we would be at the less mature end of that kind of spectrum. The educational team at UoB were tasked with examining the effect of the transition. I don't use that dreadful term, online pivot, I find it uncomfortable and very, very, almost an understatement of the scale of the transition that organisations had to undertake. The effect on UoB teachers and teaching staff, we wanted to gain an insight and understanding of the impact of the changes on their personal and to some extent their digital wellbeing and examine the impact on teaching practice, their relationship with the institution, in terms of their own disposition to teaching and learning and the institutional support provided through the transition. The study investigated the perceptions of staff of the transition to online that occurred primarily between March 2020 and March 2021, during which staff were exposed to a sudden transformation of teaching, curriculum, design, delivery and assessment. And during this period, staff underwent an extreme overhaul in their methods of teaching due to the sudden and drastic move. The compulsory and swift online transition affected all stakeholders, including both staff and students, and with both theoretical and practical lectures that were usually taught within a classroom setting, moving to the completely new online environment. The first element of the research I spoke about last year involved a mixed methods approach with primary data gathered through voluntary staff survey and we had over 150 participants in that survey, so we have a reasonable sample size. These were supported through follow-up discussions and through self-selecting focus groups to explore the issues exposed in the staff survey. And last year's alt conference, we presented our initial findings of our research, which at the time consisted of the data which had gained through the voluntary staff survey and I'll cover those findings very, very briefly given that we've got about 25 minutes here. The last 18 months, we've been further surveys, further studies and various focus groups to drill down on specific topics and issues that emerged through the surveys we conducted. And we're now in our third year of studying and what has emerged is a very meaningful insight as to how the pandemic has impacted on staff and their ongoing and often fluctuating relationship with the institution. And I say fluctuating because I sensed that in the very early days, there was a great deal of positiveness in the latter on the mid stages that, yeah, I'm just looking here, the microphone is making terrible noises. I don't know why. Okay. Maybe it's me rubbing against the laptop. I shall try and do something. It's worth reflecting on our original research and who we asked in that research. We asked the School of Art and Design and Creative Technologies, the Faculty of Professional Studies Incorporating Accounting, Business Education, Law and Psychology, the Faculty of Health and Well-Being and we were subject to UOB ethics, all volunteers and all anonymous. We developed six principal questions. The first was what was the impact of the transition to online learning on the university staff and their job satisfaction? What was the impact of the transition to online teaching on UOB personal staff welfare? What was the impact of the online transition on individual staff's relationship with technology? The impact of online transition on individual staff and their interactions with peers and students? What was the impact of the transition on individual staff in respect to their teaching practice? What was the impact and how did the individual University of Baltimore staff feel they were supported through the whole process by the university in making the transition to online teaching? I think it's worth pointing out that one of the emergent properties of the research in terms of the data was that we found real distinctions between genders, male and female, of those that declared, in terms of their feelings of isolation particularly, which we hadn't expected. So that asked us to certainly prompted us to undertake more detailed study in looking at why that would be. During the first presentation I did for OLD, it was our supposition, which largely proved fairly accurate in that we felt that a lot of female lecturers were carrying on teaching with a much heavier workload in terms of online life responsibilities, children and indeed managing aspects of the pandemic. And it's something, I think, that we need to bear in mind. There was very little in terms of difference between male and female in their use of technology. So I think it was perhaps more to do with these additional responsibilities. And that was confirmed certainly in the focus groups that we followed up with. The largest response for the online questionnaires and participation in focus groups came from nursing and health. It's a very fast expanding area in the university, and it contained a lot of new staff who were new to teaching. And so therefore were less experienced. Could be argued reflection on practice is an integral part of experienced daily health and social care practitioners. I argue that reflective practice is something that all of us are now undertaking. All of us are indeed expected to do within part of our teaching and reflection. Regarding teaching staff, 75% of respondents describe themselves as being very experienced or experienced educators. 61% of respondents declared that their job satisfaction was much worse and deteriorated over the pandemic to varying degrees. And the relationship between indicated, as I mentioned earlier, that females were much more likely to have a worsening job satisfaction than males, which prompted us to do further investigation. It's also significant to note that there was a lot of negative feedback from staff regarding the practicalities of working from home, such as staff having to use their personal IT equipment, Wi-Fi and internet with, and I quote, limited office space or no office space, pains from sitting at very small desks on chairs defined for occasional use and fluctuating quality of technology provisions. I think I'll move on a little bit given that we have very little time and I'm looking there now and I'm already up to about four minutes to 12. So I'll answer the specific research questions. The impact of transition on online learning on the University of Alton staff and their job satisfaction, the transition resulted in a marked decrease in job satisfaction, particularly and surprisingly, perhaps among senior lecturers and female staff. These responses indicate this was due to more personal and individual issues related to the technical issues I've raised earlier, space to work from, and as I've mentioned, personal home circumstances and household members, children at home, child care responsibilities and being forced to develop a new learning digital and literacy skills for teaching in a very short space of time. It's significant to note that extensive pressure on key worker subject areas such as health and education who will continue to practice either working or coordinating their work and teaching placements for students in the NHS and school, college settings. Many education settings were struggling to operate at this time. Hospitals were overwhelmed with coping with the pandemic. The impact of the pandemic on staff mental health may have been a significant contributing factor. What was the impact of the transition to online teaching on personal staff welfare? As my previous response, staff welfare deteriorated markedly during lockdown and the transition and this is consistent with other more general research undertaken within the wider population. Suffices to say the pressure to continue to provide a high quality education experience in lockdown for learners was really, really felt by staff. What was the impact of the online transition on individual staff's relationship with educational technology? On the whole staff, both male and female, the transition had prompted them to use technology in their teaching when conventionally and historically they may have not. The imposition of technology had helped staff quickly improve their technical and online pedagogical skills through necessity and provided a real focus on the affordances of technology, perhaps ones they were not aware of before the pandemic and staff generally believed that their understanding and their relationship with technology had improved significantly over the period. What was the impact of the transition with their interactions with peers and students? Interestingly staff indicated that in some instances interactions had actually improved in the online environment with some students flourishing in the transition, whilst others did struggle. As highlighted students suggested age is a differential factor not particularly one I would agree with, though this would require further investigation before any conclusive comment could be made. What was the impact of the transition on individual staff in respect of their teaching practice? A consistent pattern of positivity from staff has ran throughout the responses indicating the majority of 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. This was due to more personal circumstances we spoke about earlier and many of the other distracting factors. How did the University of Bolton staff feel they were supported by the University in making this transition to online teaching? It was clear staff that felt the University and their line managers had overwhelmingly presented support and clarity around expectations of the future of education in its current circumstances. What I would say is that that situation has probably changed during the newer transition now where the universities move towards a new teaching approach which is entitled Campus Plus which involves a combination of teaching face-to-face and an online requirement up to a particular percentage and it seems to me rather an arbitrary percentage which again I think has been problematic for some students. The sample size really doesn't reflect we thought a good representation of the current demographic of the University in relation to gender split and the staff student ratio in each school. One of the problems there I believe is that we've used as I said we had a much stronger response from our female staff to focus groups and further interviews which is consistent with other findings in other studies that for whatever reason females seem to be more disposed to discussing these issues perhaps more than male staff and I think it's something that we'd like to look at in more detail and admission of proficiency and admission of competence in technology seem to be far greater again I think unexpectedly consistent with other research around male staff more than female staff. How did individual University of Oldt staff feel they were supported by the University in making that transition? They felt not overwhelmingly supported. Our future recommendations that came out of this is that we need to reflect upon the role that online and distance education will play moving forward learning from best practices which emerged during the lockdown period. Now I've seen some of the other presentation this morning that are putting up warning signs in terms of are we going to move back to how things were prior to the pandemic and I think it's something we need to take heed of. There seems to be an expectation in senior management particularly in our institution that we will move back to a much more conventional relationship and that's concerning. There will be evolution of hybrid blended learning models of teaching and creating perhaps a new prototype of higher education requiring further digital skills. Institutional inclusion procedures to combat digital poverty which I haven't really time to address in this presentation and to promote social inclusion and further equality and diversity. Those are huge issues that emerged and University of Bolton our cohort of students is the most ethnically diverse of any university in the UK so it's a huge challenge for us to manage that. We need to consider as to how to implement these best practices and develop resilience factors in staff, in mental health and their well-being and promoting positive behaviour online for our teachers and our students. Post lockdown the new campus model at UOB provides this flexible blended learning approach for staff combining face to face and asynchronous teaching and learning to benefit mental health. However, new issues have emerged with the government focus on sustainability although the blended online teaching environment is seen as an improvement reducing staff's carbon footprint and there are studies by Aurora and Netic that have highlighted that. Issues of the cost of living and fuel poverty will present new problems. Heating and powering officers at homes in our homes is presenting new challenges and financial pressures on staff working from home. The sample size as I said didn't reflect an accurate breakdown and that's something that we're hoping to address in the studies over the coming year of work. I think that's about me so we're ready for questions I try to keep it as brief as possible. Are there any questions? Thank you very much Paul that was really really interesting it's interesting to see the differences between the genders and I think we can all identify with those challenges that we had at the beginning with working from home and it's also not surprising when you say that there was that dissatisfaction at the start and how that's shifting how we feel towards that now I mean I personally certainly quite enjoy working from home now at the beginning it was a nightmare should we say so while we're waiting for some questions to come through I just want to ask what are the immediate next steps of your research? Well what we are hoping to do is we're going to re-conduct the survey which we'll do with some additional questions later this year and follow that up with focus groups I mean it is interesting that what we have found is that with the campus plus model we've found as I've said some new issues emerging and there seems to be and I can say an almost complacent perspective by senior management in terms of continuing to not only deliver but to improve the online experience as our staff have become certainly more competent and more comfortable in using online tools using digital technologies the expectation of staff themselves is for a richer experience and their exploration is creating new challenges and new problems in terms of infrastructure in the university and infrastructure in home as they become more comfortable we seem to have created a new set of problems Yeah Yeah that's true So we've got some questions coming through I'll just share a question from Vicky How might you use the results to inform policy and leadership? Well what I'd like to do is probably switch the recording but not here but I'm not We will continue to undertake our study how much notice senior management take of this study is debatable it's put into our technology groups but it does require and I've had this conversation with other colleagues the conference this morning some leadership there and I fear that much of what we have produced will largely be ignored and that's sad we did note that our university has now decided to commission a commercial company to undertake a staff welfare service survey where much of the data we've gathered over the last three years I'm hoping will be considered but my fear is perhaps it won't perhaps I'm too old and I'm too cynical but I'd like to think that senior management will take this on board certainly in the technology teams it has been taken on board but that needs to extend further up the management chain and at the moment that's not really happening as I would like Yeah I think you've actually answered Suzanne's question there as well where she's asking how senior management has reacted to these findings Yeah somebody fiery red which is what a wonderful tag that is that's terrible yes it is it is but I again I've probably been in higher education well I have been in a very very long time and in some ways the pandemic was really useful to us in raising these questions in prompting institutions to think about this it's perhaps moved our understanding of technology on so much that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been in that emergency teaching phase and consistent with other presentation I just hope that we don't lose that learning it's invaluable Yeah absolutely let's just share a point from Dom who says it was important to hear the point being made that climate issues and the cost of living make similar cases for effective online learning in the same way that lockdown Yeah and again that's something that's relatively recent where staff are saying well if I'm working at home I'm supporting this then there is an expense involved and the tax system certainly hasn't moved forward enough and neither has our compensation systems in terms of salaries to adequately provide for that so I think that's something that should be taken on board for the future I've just noted I think it's Vicki Dale has made a comment there sounds like a waste of resources to commission another survey instead of building on existing work I don't want to sound negative but it did come across negatively of course at the operational level we are building on the work we've done we're trying to build this in I think my comment was that I think senior management could do more to support the work that we've done and perhaps take more note of the findings than is occurring we will build on it we're resilient and so again the stronger our arguments the more that we can put the case to senior management to support our activities and I agree with most of the comments there that Suzanne it's frustrating yes it is frustrating I don't want to come across as negative because I'm quite positive about things and we do have a tendency as Don highlighted in HE2 reinvent already effective wheels we do and again I think one of the concerns I had in moving forward was the arbitrary percentages applied to online and campus based I mean interestingly for us a side of this I've not talked about students here but our NSS results and our student feedback was exceptionally positive during and immediately after lockdown so our students if we can pay credence to those survey our internal surveys and the NSS survey seemed very pleased with the provision that we were able to give during lockdown and that seems to be continuing through this academic year as well so I think perhaps maybe as a closing comment it's for me it seems to have had more of a profound effect on our teaching staff than it has perhaps our students and I'm not surmising as to why that might be at this stage but I think that's an interesting question to perhaps look at in the future yeah absolutely yeah totally agree with you there okay thank you so much for your time Paul that was such an interesting session and had a good conversation about that afterwards if any of you do have more questions for Paul or want to continue this conversation you can do so over in our discord channel and so for now I just want to say thanks again to Paul and enjoy the rest of your conference thank you