Navigating the Current “New World” of Teaching with Technology: A Glimpse into Our Teachers’ Minds

The COVID-19 pandemic helped spark a surge in innovative usages of technology in education, from robot-based remote graduation ceremonies to immersive learning through extended reality, meetings in fantastical game worlds, automatic examination methods, and flexible learning options such as hybrid classes. It’s been said that we can’t go back to “normal” becausethis isnormal now–but what exactly is today’s “new normal”? The current paper reports on the results of an anonymous online survey conducted with 42 teachers in business, IT, nursing, and education at our university in October 2021, to gain insight into where some teachers on the “front lines” currently stand on the use of technology in education. Some insights included that: More teachers than we had expected were using robotics and extended reality (XR), suggesting that silo effects can exist in education, even at small universities; furthermore, the rates of teachers who had seen such usage seemed close to the rates of teachers who had tried using them, suggesting the usefulness of raising awareness to promote professional digital competence (PDC). Rates for using games and exam tools were lower than expected, despite the availability of game platforms and a growing need to consider the threat of how technology can be misused to cheat in exams, possibly due to teachers’ limited time for pedagogical development. Also, teachers appeared to have strong and differing opinions about learning formats, although a general preference was observed for physical classes and exams, and hybrid teacher meetings. Our aim is that these results will be used by our university’s pedagogical center to support our teachers’ PDC and uses of edtech in the near future.