Dra. Sáez-Delgado, Fabiola

Introduction. Even before the pandemic began, teachers faced multiple challenges such as diverse student populations with widely varying needs, excessive workloads, lack of community support, and adverse working conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these problems. The teachers have been increasingly susceptible to stress, anxiety, and depression. The objective of this research was to evaluate the mediation effect of coping strategies on the relationship between emotional intelligence and teachers' mental health. Method. The design was explanatory with latent cross-sectional variables. The sample was 1668 Chilean school level teachers, 331 (19.8%) were men, and 1337 (80.2%) were women; the mean age was 42.08 years (SD = 11.50). Three scale self-report were used: the emotional intelligence WLEIS, the scale DASS-21 was used to measure mental health levels y, the short version of the COPE-28, for coping strategies. Results. This study showed that high levels of anxiety, depression, and stress are significantly related to the lower emotional intelligence of teachers. The strongest relationships are between mental health variables and the emotional intelligence evaluation and regulation of emotions. The results indicated that the dimensions of emotional intelligence predicted 22%, 26%, and 23% of the variance in anxiety, depression, and stress, respectively. The estimated mediation model showed satisfactory fit indices. For anxiety, active coping and religion were mediated, and for stress, substance abuse, self-distraction and disengagement were mediated. Also, the results showed indirect effects of two maladaptive coping strategies (denial and self-blame) between the relationship of emotional intelligence the dimensions and depression, anxiety, and stress. Discussion and Conclusion. Explanatory models can be the basis for specific strategies to treat stress, anxiety, and depression in teachers. Considering the importance of the teaching role, the results of this study are useful to guide intervention actions that strengthen the management of emotions and the identification and use of effective coping strategies for the promotion of mental health.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students worldwide have continued their education remotely. One of the challenges of this modality is that students need access to devices such as laptops and smartphones. Among these options, smartphones are the most accessible because of their lower price. This study analyzes the usage patterns of smartphone users of undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional descriptive study included 365 students: 162 (44.4%) women and 203 (55.6%) men from a Chilean university. The results revealed that students often accessed the learning management system (LMS) with their computers rather than with their smartphones. Students were connected to the LMS for more hours on their computers than on their smartphones. However, they spent more hours simultaneously connected on their computers and smartphones than just on their computers. During the day, students accessed the LMS mainly from 13:00 to 1:00. The number of connections decreased from 1:00 to 8:00 and increased from 8:00 to 13:00. The LMS resource that students accessed the most using smartphones was discussion forums, while the one they accessed the least was wiki pages. We expect these results to motivate faculties to schedule their activities during the hours students tend to be online and promote discussion forums.

Due to the closure of universities worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching methods were suddenly transformed to an emergency remote teaching (ERT) modality. Due to the practical nature of STEM courses, students cannot participate in activities in which manipulating objects is necessary for accomplishing learning objectives. In this study, we analyze the relation among STEM students learning beliefs at the beginning of ERT (T1) with their Learning Management systems (LMS) time-on-task and their final academic performance (T2) during the first semester of ERT. We used a prospective longitudinal design. 2063 students (32.3% females) from a university in Chile participated, where the academic year starts in March and finishes in December 2020. We assessed their learning and performance beliefs through an online questionnaire answered at the beginning of the academic period (T1). Then, using learning analytics, time invested in the CANVAS LMS and the academic performance achieved by students at the end of the semester (T2) were assessed. The results show that students mainly stated negative beliefs about learning opportunities during ERT (n = 1,396; 67.7%). In addition, 48.5% (n = 1,000) of students stated beliefs of “medium” academic performance for the first semester (T1). Students with lower learning beliefs at T1 spent less time in the LMS during the semester and had a lower academic performance at T2 than students who had higher learning beliefs at T1. The implications of these findings on the role of instructors and institutions of higher education are discussed.