Abstract
The main objective is to evaluate the techno stress perception in the Chilean higher education system professors, a system with a strong market orientation regarding the career's free choice and professional orientation, which is mainly offered in face-to-face mode. In the techno-stress levels identification, it is important to distinguish if these are such that they can affect the teaching performance. For this, techno-tensors and factors are used that determine the technology impact levels in academic stress, in the components: skepticism, fatigue, anxiety and inefficacy. A quantitative approach methodology and non-random design is used, with a snowball sampling obtaining the 190 academics' opinions from Chilean universities. Detecting in general low techno-stress levels with the fatigue slightly higher in comparison to the other three components.
TopIntroduction
According to an International Labor Organization (ILO) a fundamental resolution issued in 1975 must not only respect the worker’s life and health and leave them free time for rest and leisure but must also allow them to serve society and achieve their self-realization by developing their abilities. (Sauter, Murphy, Hurrell, & Levi, 1998). Molina-Sabando and García-Lucas (2018), add that in the last decade the labor demands imposed by the Higher Education supervisory bodies encourage a high level of anxiety in university teachers who must fit into different roles, which involve greater participation in management procedures and decision making inherent into the teaching - learning process.
Conditions and work nature have changed rapidly in recent decades. Thus, today's work environments are characterized by a growing emphasis on knowledge and information-based activities and an increasing trust in new technologies. A situation that has generated new demands to assume the new teaching role and education challenges with new pedagogical, technological and methodological approaches. (García, Iglesias, Saleta & Romay, 2016).
Thus the increase in labor demands in recent decades imposed by the Higher Education supervisory bodies, have forced university academics to join different roles that involve greater participation in management procedures and decision making inherent into the teaching - learning process, adding the increase of administrative jobs that are not contemplated within the classroom hours and adding to these the mental waste. Resulting in teachers with high workloads, a performance in line with their monotonous routines, lack of initiative and interest in innovating on their work. The above results in academics subjected to strong work pressure and therefore suffering occupational high levels of stress, affecting negatively their satisfaction, performance, productivity and health, leading to psychosomatic symptoms and diseases that gradually develop and accumulate, causing Exhaustion or Burnout syndrome. (Molina-Sabando & García-Lucas, 2018).
García (2017, 2017b), stands out as the main characteristics of the work performed by university teachers in contemporary times: the tensions between teaching and research, work intensification, academic productivism, commodification, competition, quantitative assessment, the individual versus the collective, and the bureaucratization of research activities.
The term stress was used in 1926 by Hans Selye when he noticed in laboratory mice that they experienced glandular abdominal changes due to a hormone injection. Who defined this a nonspecific response of body to any request for change, a decade later (1936) in his article “A Syndrome produced by Diverse Nocuous Agents” published in Nature (Seyle, 1936, p. 32). This non-specific stress response is considered a mental state, that is, a relationship between an individual and a threatening context that exceeds their coping resources, which in the technical and computer-related work, specific case reveal several medical consequences in employees, because they experience an increase in the adrenaline and noradrenaline levels in their body, the excessive secretions of adrenal glands increase the stress stimulus, accelerate the pulse, increase blood pressure, increase the conductivity skin level and increase the effort jaw muscle. (Alam, 2016, Molina-Sabando & García-Lucas, 2018).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Asynchronous Online Education: It is an online education form where communication is done asynchronously, that is, through non-immediate networks and without the need for people to be connected at the same time. The best example to understand the asynchronous communication is the electronic mail or a forum in which a query is left and can be solved in the following hours.
Stress: It is an organism adaptive response that allows to respond to environment different demands. Stress is naturally necessary for survival, however, if it is maintained over time, it can generate negative effects on health.
Mental Workload: It refers to the cognitive, mental or intellectual type work demands. The mental workload is influenced both by the work demands and the environment where it is developed, as well as by individual factors.
Liquid Education: It is a ‘liquid modernity' conceptual variant of the sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, applied by him to the education field. So, Bauman makes reference to how human consciousness regarding the dominant instability in today's society, forces to develop an immediacy culture, where education should adapted be fast enough to integrate into a world that changes in continuous time.
Ubiquity: It is the ability to be present everywhere at the same time, originally associated with a divine gift. But thanks to mobile technology and virtual and simultaneous presence in various social networks is understood as a gift technologically acquired by humans to be able to be present at any place and time.
Ergonomics: The term ergonomics derives from the Greek words 'ergo' and 'nomos', where ergo means “work” and, nomos means “laws”, therefore in the simple sense, ergonomics refers to “the laws of labor”. Now, the ergonomics discipline is responsible for studying the interaction between the human being and all the elements that make up their particular work situation, so that the demands or this demands, do not exceed the people capabilities, ensuring a life quality optimal and efficiency.
Technology: It is the applied science to the concrete problems resolution that facilitate the goods or services design and creation that facilitate human adaptation to the surrounding environment and the humanity essential needs and desires satisfaction. Although there are many technologies and very different from each other, as a theoretical discipline technology studies the knowledge common to all technologies. Although it is common to use the term technology in singular both to refer to the set of all, as well as to one of them in specific.