University teachers’ profession in post-pandemic hybrid higher education teaching and learning environments

In 2020, universities were forced to instantly shift from traditional face-to-face teaching to fully digital solutions.

The resulting accelerated digital transformation has put university teachers in at times uncomfortable positions, as even educators without particular competencies in digital tools and methods were involved.

More than a year into the pandemic, university teachers seem to have left their state of emergency and increased their knowledge and competence about digitalized teaching, allowing the hypothesis that post-pandemic higher education settings will be largely hybrid.The proposed project aims to capture these ongoing transformative and dynamic shifts in university teachers’ professional activity and contribute with evidence-informed recommendations for various educational stakeholders.

The project, consisting of four sub-studies, is methodologically highly innovative and inherently mixed, longitudinal and participatory.

We intend to investigate university teachers´ lived experiences (Q methodology), co-construct new knowledge about hybrid teaching and learning environments (research cycles) and study teachers´ post-pandemic teaching practices (observations with stimulated recall interviews).

In addition, the project is informed by an ongoing literature review of newly published research about the subject matter, enabling us to make international comparisons. Theoretically, the studies are framed by activity theory and the theory of expansive learning.