TECHNOLOGY FATIGUE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: THE CASE OF DISTANCE PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Technology has invaded all spheres of life, including education and providing a lot of facilities. It has played a great role in managing education during the COVID-19 crisis. However, technology might prove detrimental if there is too much of it which may negatively affect its users in some way. This study aimed to investigate final-year students’ technology fatigue in distance project-based learning environments during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The study employed an online survey approach to collect data from 86 final-year students. The results showed that technology does not highly fatigue final-year students in distance project-based learning environments. Still, the study reported some factors that contribute to increasing and decreasing final-year students’ technology fatigue level, which may inform project supervisors and decision-makers on the best practice for implementing distance project-based learning without putting students under great pressure and fatigue resulting from technology. This study adds to a limited yet growing body of literature on a very important topic, technology fatigue, that has recently arisen in the academic sector especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when technology was the quickest and most ideal response to the global lockdown.