Challenges That Need to Be Addressed before Starting New Emergency Remote Teaching at HEIs and Proposed Solutions

Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) aims to swiftly adapt conventional face-to-face educational methods to alternative (typically virtual) formats during crises. The recent COVID-19 pandemic accentuated the vulnerability of traditional educational systems, revealing limitations in their ability to effectively withstand such unprecedented events, thereby exposing shortcomings in the adopted ERT strategies. The goal of this study is to discuss the establishment of resilient, sustainable, and healthy educational systems in non-crisis times, which will enable teachers and students to make a smoother and less stressful transition to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) when necessary. A comprehensive hybrid approach, combining quantitative (interviews) and qualitative (online survey) methods has obtained data from 276 professors in 29 countries. These data have been used to identify a range of challenges related to ERT and their perceived level of difficulty. The methodological and social challenges (overshadowed by technical issues at the beginning of the crisis) identified in this research-such as the lack of personal contact or poor feedback from students-have been found to be the most demanding. From the collected insights regarding the perceived level of difficulty associated with the identified challenges, the present study aims to contribute to making higher education systems more robust in non-crisis times.