Online Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring University Teachers’ Burnout Levels

In 2020, traditional classroom learning was shifted to distance learning because of the Covid-19 pandemic.In Bangladesh, educational institutions closed in March 2020.Both public and private universities decided to take classes and examinations online to provide uninterrupted education to students during this closure.The Ministry of Education, Bangladesh, reopened the secondary and higher secondary institutions as well as universities in February 2022, considering students' vaccination status.The long period of online education from March 2020 to February 2022 has been a new experience for both the teachers and students, and both groups faced several challenges to adapt to this novel situation.For teachers, a significant challenge was to adapt to the abrupt transition to a different mode of instruction they had no experience with.Dealing with this challenge might have caused burnout among them.This study was designed to determine the extent of burnout Bangladeshi university English teachers have possibly faced in online teaching scenarios.The Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) was used to collect the data and understand the burnout level of the participants.Data analysis revealed that Bangladeshi English teachers from universities felt a moderate level of Emotional Exhaustion, a low level of Depersonalization, and a low level of reduced Personal Accomplishment.The results also demonstrate that private university teachers felt more burned out than public university teachers.A positive correlation was also found between workload and burnout.The teachers also provided several reasons, effects, and suggestions through interviews, demonstrating a clearer picture of teacher burnout in online teaching.