ICT Interactions and COVID-19 – A Theorization Across Two Pandemic Waves

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic instigated the rapid shift to remote work and virtual interactions, constituting a new normal of professional interaction over information and communication technologies (ICT), such as videoconferencing platforms, email, and mobile devices. While ICT may provide many benefits for remote work, such as flexibility, reductions in travel time, and geographical interaction, ICT may also contribute to increases in job strain, reductions in social interactions, and the decline of mental health. While reliance on ICT for remote work interactions is becoming the new normal of organizational activity, scholarly appreciation of the stages in which employees, particularly educators, enact interactions over ICT is limited. Further, the intensity of the pandemic is unlike anything management scholars have studied before, and previous research into ICT use offers little insight into how ICT behaviours evolve over time. Our research explores how educators enact ICT interactions with students throughout the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted 24 open-ended interviews with educators to learn about their experiences shifting to ICT for virtual classes. We found that ICT interactions between educators and students are enacted through two sequential, interrelated stages: divergent interaction behaviours and convergent interaction behaviours, with each stage corresponding to the first and second waves of the pandemic. We delineate the phases within each enacting stage of ICT interaction, and conjecture that future use of ICT may include iterative cycles of divergent and convergent interaction behaviours, particularly if educators explore how to leverage ICT in more creative ways. Our research presents a theorization of ICT interaction as an increasingly prevalent form of IT-enabled educational interactions and communication. We provide insight into how educators successfully shifted to ICT use for remote work, and offer implications for the facilitation of hybrid work arrangements in educational settings using ICT.