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      Lecturers’ Experiences of the Blurring of Time and Space during Covid-19 in a South African ODeL University

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            Abstract

            Education has been greatly impacted by the current Covid-19 pandemic. With countries worldwide experiencing unprecedented extended lockdowns, higher education providers have sought innovative technological ways of effectively delivering tuition and support to diverse students. This has, however, also increased the blurring of the work–home boundaries. This paper reports on the way in which Covid-19 facilitated the blurring of the work–home boundaries of academics in the College of Education at the University of South Africa, a distance education institution. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 15 lecturers via Microsoft Teams. The results showed that, owing to a lack of workspace at their homes, many academics were forced to work beyond normal office hours. Inexplicit expectations from the employer exacerbated the blurring of work–home interfaces for many academics. The results of this study can be used for future research to seek ways in which the management of the University of South Africa or employers of other higher education institutions can help to reduce the blurring of work–home boundaries.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            UnisaRxiv
            UNISA Press
            28 April 2021
            Affiliations
            [1 ] University of South Africa
            Author notes
            Author information
            https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5932-3520
            https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2817-6329
            Article
            10.25159/UnisaRxiv/000014.v1
            b2146d50-7fda-4899-a6be-8e5cbc5cbb34

            This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0 , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com .

            History
            : 28 April 2021
            : 9 July 2021
            Funding
            None N/A

            The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
            Education
            Covid-19,blurring boundaries,boundary theory,working from home,open and distance learning,ODL,e-learning,higher education

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