AMITY BUSINESS SCHOOL

AMITY UNIVERSITY , NOIDA , UTAR PRADESH

PROJECT

On

TECHNOSTRESS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DURING COVID 19

PANDAMIC

By

Ms. Somya Saxena (A0101920245)

Ms. Riya Paul (A01012320021)
Ms. Stuti Misra (A0101920061)
Ms. Muskan Anand (A0101920138)
Ms. Ritika (A0101920198)

MBA Class of 2020-2022

Under the Supervision of

Dr. Harminder Kaur Gujral

Assistant Professor

Department of HR and GENERAL

Managerial Counselling [HR723] PSDA 1

 INTRODUCTION

Technostress is a new and understudied topic. It is a problem of adaptation

experienced by individuals when they are unable to cope with challenges
associated with the use of technology and to changing requirements in many
aspects of learning, resulting from the use of technology.

Technostress mostly focuses on three topics:

1. Technostress creators and solutions of technostress.

2. Negative consequences caused by technostress.
3. Demographic characteristics related to technostress.

Technostress creators and solutions of technostress

Research is on five categories of technostress creators: techno-overload,

techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-uncertainty, and techno-
insecurity.

Techno-overload (TO)
Refers to a situation when teaching staff is encouraged to work faster and
longer due to increased workload due to the use of it. It can result in workers
experiencing work fatigue and other health problems. Poor workplace design,
awkward and repetitive body movements and other ergonomic hazards cause
or contribute to many cumulative trauma disorders that affect the hands,
wrists, elbows, arms, shoulders, lower back, and cervical spine areas.
Workload has a positive effect on teacher’s emotional exhaustion. The
indicators used to measure Techno-overload in this study are more work to
do, work with very tight time, changing work habits, higher workload
because of complexity, less free time, and touch with work.

Techno-complexity (TC)
Is defined as a situation where the complexity of ICT adds to lecturers'
difficulty because they are forced to improve their skills and learn
technologies that tend to change. Indicators used to measure are complex to
understand, complex to use effectively, and doubt its usefulness in education,
knowledge to operate effectively, and a considerable amount of time and
effort.
Teaching and learning processes with the use of ICT become more
complicated than conventional methods where face-to-face in class occurs.

Techno-insecurity (TIS)
Describes a situation where lecturers feel insecure about the presence of ICT
because it is feared that it can replace the role of lecturers in teaching.
Indicators used to measure Techno-insecurity are ICT disrupts standard work
patterns, threats to the job, upgrading skillsets to avoid being replaced,
colleagues as a threat, and fear of being replaced by colleagues. Insecurity in
teaching is also motivated by basic things such as confidence in using
computers to teach anxiety in using computers to teach and experience in
operating teaching programs.

Techno-uncertainty (TU)
Refers to a situation where lecturers feel uneasy about the integration of ICT
in work, which can lead to specific qualifications so that work expectations
form ambiguity. Indicators used to measure Techno-uncertainty are frequent
upgrades in ICT, constant changes to its functionalities, and replacing one
ICT with another.

Technostress has various psychological as well as physiological impacts on a

human being. It includes decreased job satisfaction, organizational
commitment, and productivity. The major causes of technostress are due to:

1) The quick change of technology.

2) Lack of proper training and awareness.
3) An increased workload.
4) Lack of technology standardization.
5) Reliability and availability of proper and adequate hardware and
software.
 Negative consequences caused by technostress

This understanding of technostress includes “the negative impacts on

attitudes, thoughts or behaviours, caused directly or indirectly through
technology,” thus allowing a sufficiently broad definition of the phenomenon
to incorporate successive technological advances. Thus, considering
technostress as: A negative psychological state related to the use of ICT or a
threat to its use in the future. This state is conditioned by the perception of a
mismatch between demands and resources related to the use of ICTs leading
to a high level of unpleasant psychophysiological activation and the
development of negative attitudes towards ICT.

However, there has been a dearth of psychometric instruments to measure

levels of technostress. Therefore, to fill this gap by developing a
psychometrically robust instrument to measure technostress among university
students this study hopes to provide valid diagnostic information to locate
maladapted students in technology-enhanced learning and preserve their
wellbeing, to enhance their constructive participation in technology-enhanced
learning, and to enable them to better exploit benefits associated with the use
of technology in higher education.

Very limited research is done in the field of education, in which most were
conducted in elementary and secondary schools. Furthermore, even among
those technostress-related studies in educational settings, most focused on
faculty members and teachers in different levels of schools, but few have
examined this issue in the student population, especially among students in
higher education.
 Demographic characteristics related to technostress

Demographic characteristics related to technostress, a variety of demographic

features have been examined, such as age, gender, experience in the use of
technology, educational levels, and efficacy levels of users. However, no
consensus has been reached regarding how technostress may vary for
individuals of different demographics.

Some of these characteristics include gender, willingness the use technology,

and personality have received special attention. This is probably because
male and female individuals often have different experiences and perceptions
of the use of technology. Individuals’ willingness the use technology is
considered an important determinant of technostress and those with low
willingness have higher possibilities of suffering from technostress.

Personality, which is a stable set of characteristics, has been strongly

associated with stress-related responses in previous studies and has been
considered an important predictor of students’ behaviour and academic
success

This study has developed a psychometrically robust instrument using new

methods (combining factor analysis and the Rasch model) to measure
technostress among the student population in higher education in their
technology-enhanced learning.
 OBJECTIVES

To study technostress among university students in technology-enhanced

learning (TEL). It shows factors affecting students' wellbeing and academic
success in TEL.

PROCEDURE

1) Chose a topic “Technostress in University Students During Covid

19”
2) Preparing questionnaire related to the topic.
3) Identify dependent and independent variables.
4) Review of already existing literature on the topic.
5) Collection of data from primary and secondary data.
6) Preparation of research report.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

 A Alvarez-Risco, S Del-Aguila-Arcentales, (2021) The study aims to

validate and apply an instrument to assess the relationship between
communication overload, social overload, technostress, exhaustion and
academic performance. We performed a cross-sectional, analytical
study of 2286 university medical students to assess the influence of
technostress as a mediator of social media overload, communication
overload and mental exhaustion and its detrimental effect on the
academic performance of university students in Peru during the
COVID-19 pandemic. The research model was validated using partial
least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to establish the
influence of variables on the model. Communication and social
overload were found to positively influence technostress by
correlations of 0.284 and 0.557, respectively. Technostress positively
influenced exhaustion by 0.898, while exhaustion negatively
influenced academic performance by -0.439. Bootstrapping
demonstrated that the path coefficients of the research model were
statistically significant.

 M Christian, ER Indriyarti, (2021) A significant negative association

was found between techno-sociality and depressive symptoms but not
anxiety symptoms. No evidence was found for an association between
pace of change and anxiety or depressive symptoms. Multiple
mediation analyses revealed significant direct effects of techno-
overload, work-home conflict, and techno-ease on anxiety symptoms,
and of work-home conflict and techno-ease on depressive symptoms.
Work-home conflict had significant indirect effects on anxiety and
depressive symptoms through avoidance coping.
 J Galvin, MS Evans, K Nelson, G Richards, (2021) A survey of 307
college and university professors predominantly teaching in various
business-related disciplines was conducted to determine if there is a
difference in the level of technostress creators perceived by educators
before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. A Paired Samples t-test
was performed to compare overall technostress scores of faculties
currently teaching in postsecondary institutions. Results show a
significant difference in overall faculty perceived technostress scores
before the COVID-19 pandemic and during the health crisis.
 S Boyer-Davis, (2021) This study’s data suggest that positive
reframing plays an important mediating role between gratitude and
technostress. Gratitude also encourages positive reframing, which
reduced technostress among the students. Taken together, our data
showed that gratitude induces positive reframing, which in turn
reduces technostress among Indian students in the current study.

 Taylor & Francis, (2021) The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply

disrupted the education sector across the world. Consequently, all
learning activities must be fully conducted online, leaving no choice
for the already stressful students. Through the stressor-strain-outcome
framework, this study aims to examine the antecedents and
consequences of technostress faced by the students under the context
of compulsory e-education. A total of 388 empirical data was gathered
and analysed with the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation
Modelling. It was found that anxiety, delay in responses, and risk of
arbitrary learning are all positively related to the technostress, which in
turn associates negatively with learning satisfaction and learning
performance. Unlike past studies that researched e-education from a
voluntary enrolment perspective and, therefore, stressed the benefits;
this study investigates the negative impacts of compulsory e-education
on students. To mitigate future pandemics, we propose a set of
strategies that could be implemented.

 A Shirish, S Chandra, SC Srivastava, (2021) Online learning

environments facilitate improved student learning by offering IT tools
to enhance student productivity- and creativity-in-learning. COVID-19
impacted social-distancing measures forced an abrupt switch to online
learning in most universities, putting immense pressure on the students
to creatively adapt to new ways of online learning. results indicate that
IT mindfulness has significant positive relationships with both
productivity- and creativity-in- learning.
 Research Methodology
I. Design

Descriptive design was utilized to have a better understanding of technostress

among university students in technology enhanced learning

Descriptive design was utilized to identify the techno stress among university
students. it shows factors affecting students’ wellbeing and academic success
in TEL

 Primary Data

 Secondary data

II. Sample Size

The Sample size contains 50 students among university

III. Tool Used

a. Questionnaire
The questionnaire contains set of questions asked to the respondents.
The questionnaire was structured. It was done in a prearranged order.
The questionnaire consisted of close ended questions.

b. Pie chart

Pie Chart was chosen for the analysis of the data to compare the
different categories out of the whole therefore showing a part to whole
relationship in the data set.

c. Graphs
Graphs were chosen for the analysis of the data to compare the different
categories out of the whole therefore showing a part to whole
relationship in the data set.
 Data Representation

The Survey we conducted that concludes that Male were 53.1% and Female
were 43.8%.
The survey we conducted that concludes that 18.8% agrees with the
statement, 31.1% strongly agrees, 18.8% neutral, 25% disagrees and lastly
some strongly disagrees.

The survey we conducted that concludes that above are the percentages that
shows how people feel enforced by the online mode to work with tight time
schedules.

The survey we conducted that concludes that 53.1% feel yes that they are
enforced to change habits to adapt to new technologies and 40.6% doesn’t
feel the same.
The survey we conducted that concludes that 40.6% strongly agrees that they
feel higher workload because of the online learning environment, 15.6%
disagrees about the same.

The survey we conducted that concludes that above are the percentages that
shows how longer time they need to understand and use technologies.
The survey we conducted that concludes that 50% feels yes that they find
enough time to study and upgrade the online class skills, and37.5% doesn’t
feel the same.

The survey we conducted that concludes that 50% suffer a higher workload
because of increased e-learning complexity, 28.1% says maybe and 21.9%
doesn’t feel that way.

The survey we conducted that concludes that 28.1% strongly agrees that they
feel their personal life is being invaded by your online class and on the other
hand 28.1% disagrees with the statement.
 RESULT / FINDINGS
This study contributes to the academic literature in the field of managing and
mitigating suffering in the new generations that will soon join the working
life. They do so by providing both new knowledge and empirical evidence on
the effects of technostress in university students. In this work, the theoretical
development of a causal model relating technostress and the empirical
exhaustion of students in COVID pandemic times, is empirically tested and
validated. Results let us confirm the dangerous consequences of ICTs if they
are not well managed. In addition, it might be thought that perceived stress
and individual conflicts could both be mediators of the effect between
technostress and students’ emotional exhaustion.
It has been demonstrated in this study that university students are not tech-
savvy because they are not techno-stress free. The analysis suggests that
students, as individuals, continuously strive to seek, acquire, and maintain
resources. This theoretical framework justifies that student react to the
substitution of traditional lectures to online teaching methods, in which there
is the threat of a loss of resources. Technostress and emotional exhaustion
will be the reactions until they gain some resources to cope up with the
resource losses. Ensuring that students acquire ICT skills and found the
required support from their universities (as new resources) may be the
solution.
 Learning

Improving the quality of life of students should be one of the main concerns
of universities, due to the fact they will be the next generation entering the
labor market. It is a matter of preventing their potential future suffering at
work. In recent years, the use of ICT in university studies has been
intensified and, although the internet and social networks can be excellent
tools to maintain a social relationship with classmates, high school friends
and family, they can also have negative effects on students’ mental. The issue
here is that students have been very vulnerable during the COVID-19
pandemic, and researchers have in fact proven that mental health problems
have increased in that period.

New studies about technostress and related variables such as emotional

exhaustion, are essential for its detection, management, prevention, and
mental illnesses. In a context such as the pandemic, the study of perceived
stress and intrapersonal conflicts also seems to be especially relevant. In fact,
the perception of the impact of COVID-19 on the well-being of students
turned out to be a significant predictor of perceived stress. Moreover, the
strongest relationship between global technostress occurs with individual
negative consequences where intrapersonal conflicts such as digital
attachment are framed. Given that fact, new studies must be done to explore
whether these individual problems could influence other psychological
aspects of students’ life and condition their access to the labour market with
guaranties of personal and professional success.
 Limitations

Our data were collected in India it remains unclear whether the severeness of
technostress is similar in other countries that might have more access to
social media or the internet. We surveyed university students, but
technostress also needs to be evaluated in other professional careers and in
other groups of people. It remains to be determined which is the social
network that demands the most time for students. In the future, it would also
be useful to obtain information from students concerning possible strategies
that they have used to achieve a balance between attention to social networks
and the fulfillment of academic tasks. Further effort to determine efficient
procedures to generate a reasonable and efficient use of the internet,
especially social networks, is warranted.
 Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of people’s lives and
accentuated work–home conflict, which can lead to an increase in the incidence
of technostress. The results of this investigation show that communication and
social overload positively influence the development of technostress and
exhaustion, and exhaustion negatively influences academic performance. The
results may help university managers to understand students’ technostress and
develop strategies to improve the balanced use of technology in their daily
academic activities. It is important to understand the factors that influence
technostress and academic performance during the virtual learning modality, as
this could help future research to determine the necessary steps to take during
the return to regular, in-person learning after the COVID-19 pandemic.