Being a Lecturer during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Exploratory Study about Ca' Foscari University's Language Department

Abstract

The present study represents a possible response to a disproportion that some scholars have noticed in research literature regarding the impact of COVID-19 on education. More specifically, they have criticized researchers’ tendency to focus more on students than on educators, thus providing only a partial overview of the phenomenon (Kim & Asbury, 2020; Kulikowsky et al., 2021-2). The present dissertation will, therefore, concentrate on educators, in particular on university lecturers. On the basis of the Job Characteristics Theory (JCT; Hackman & Oldham, 1975, 1976; Oldham & Hackman, 2010), this study will report lecturers’ experiences during the pandemic in relation to their perceived motivating job potential, work engagement, job satisfaction, and professional exhaustion. In addition, their attitudes towards e-learning and their satisfaction deriving from how well university managers tackled the emergency situation are considered in the study. As time references, the current dissertation will concentrate on the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020 and on the following academic year- i.e., 2020-2021. For the purposes of the present research project, lecturers working in Ca’ Foscari university’s language department in Venice were selected as the convenience sample of the study, and they were asked to complete an online questionnaire. The results met the author’s expectations partially. Some responses were indeed unexpectedly positive, thus raising hopes that, with adequate resources and support, the world of education- in this case, of higher education- can cope with the current health crisis and similar, destabilizing events even in the future.