5. Discussion
Participating Latin American and Caribbean professors express intermediate–high self-concepts of digital competence (almost 4 out of 5), with an intermediate level of digital stress (slightly above 2.5 out of 5). These results are consistent with the limited levels of digital skills that the literature attributes to professors both in general [
5] and linked to some specific aspects of the teaching activity, mainly student assessment, which is the activity in which professors manifest a lower ability [
54]. Usually, the literature correlates low levels of faculty digital skills with the scarcity of economic investment in adequate infrastructure by universities [
11,
42]. The results obtained here contradict this observation since the ratings on self-concept of digital competence and professional aspects linked to digitization turn out to be statistically independent (
Table 3 and
Table 4). Therefore, the results lead us to think that teachers link their digital competence more to their digital training, as other studies suggest [
26], although this conclusion should be contrasted with subsequent specific studies.
A moderate but positive correlation was also found to exist between self-concept of digital competence and expressed levels of digital stress (
Table 3). This result is in apparent contradiction with the effect of reducing digital stress that the literature attributes to professors’ digital training [
61]. However, the results obtained can be explained if it is understood that a higher self-concept of digital competence probably leads to a greater awareness of the digital pressure felt by professors which can lead to greater perceived digital stress [
49]. However, a more in-depth correlational study would be needed to confirm this hypothesis.
The results obtained also allow to assume that professors in Latin American private universities have, in general, better self-concepts of their digital competence than professors in public universities, and they also value better than the latter the professional aspects linked to the digitalization of higher education (
Table 4). Private universities in the Latin American region probably have a higher proportion of distance students than public universities, which may explain why they make a greater digitization effort, both in terms of equipment and faculty training [
14,
15]. This would justify the fact that both the results obtained here and those of other studies systematically show that professors at private universities claim to have better digital skills than those at public universities [
26]. This superiority can be explained by the higher level of integration of digital technologies that private universities in Latin America are experiencing [
25,
28], the precariousness and obsolescence of the infrastructure and equipment of public institutions in the region [
27], and by the greater investment that private universities make in digital training of faculty [
26].
Regarding the levels of digital stress, the results obtained are in line with the levels reported by other studies carried out in different geographical regions throughout the world [
8,
44], so it does not seem that the geographical variable is particularly explanatory in this regard. However, it has been observed that the variability of Latin American and Caribbean professors’ responses in terms of pandemic digital stress levels is high compared to the other response families (1.25 out of 5), indicating that there is much divergence among professors’ stress levels. This strong variability is consistent with the results of other work on pandemic digital stress carried out on samples of professors from more restricted geographical areas such as Venezuela [
51]. The originality and novelty of the present work lies in the finding that strong unevenness of pandemic digital stress is found throughout the Latin American and Caribbean region.
In contrast to the ratings of the professional aspects, a moderate but significant positive correlation was found between the participants’ levels of digital stress and their self-concept of digital competence (
Table 3 and
Table 4). In other words, a higher self-concept of digital competence was found to be linked to more intense digital stress, which is a novel and original contribution of the present study. The literature explains that the impact of the pandemic at the level of digitization of higher education was to make teachers responsible for providing the technical means so that the academic pace would not suffer [
11,
53]. Therefore, a higher self-concept of digital competence, which entails a greater awareness of this responsibility, may explain the higher level of digital stress observed.
Despite the better self-concepts on digital competence and the better assessments of the professional dimensions of the digitization process observed among professors at private universities, no significant differences in the level of pandemic digital stress were identified between professors at private and public universities (
Table 4). It is also found that female professors both in private and public universities manifest slightly higher levels of pandemic digital stress than male professors, with no significant difference in the behavior of this gender gap by university tenure (
Table 5). This is consistent with the results obtained by previous work in the specific setting of Venezuela, but not with the results obtained in countries with low levels of digitization in Latin America, such as Guatemala, Honduras, and Bolivia [
51]. Therefore, the results suggest that there is a strong variability between countries with respect to the behavior of gender gaps in private and public universities, which offers the results presented here as an average. It is therefore advisable to carry out a subsequent comparative study among the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to further explore the results obtained here.
In general, a decrease in digital pandemic stress is observed as the age of Latin American professors increases. The decrease is especially accelerated among those under 40 years of age and those over 55 years of age, and between 40 and 55 years of age it remains approximately stationary (
Figure 5). In contrast to the gender variable, the behavior of the level of digital pandemic stress with respect to the age of the participants is significantly different according to university tenure. In particular, the intensity of pandemic stress decreases with increasing age among private university professors, while among public university professors, this stress increases among senior professors (
Figure 4).
This result is original and novel in the literature and proves that the process of integration of digital technologies in universities in Latin America and the Caribbean is being carried out in a way that corrects the digital divide that exists in the region and that shows that the digitization of older professors is, in general, weaker [
7]. In addition, the results obtained here with respect to private university professors are consistent with works that predict that the higher level of general self-confidence that older professors have [
58] and their greater job stability [
13,
55] act as a containment mechanism for the level of digital stress. Likewise, although there is no specific analysis in the literature of professors’ digital pandemic stress behavior as a function of age, there are studies that show that, in general, middle-aged workers have high levels of stress due to work pressure, and that these stress levels decrease from 55 years [
57] or 60 years of age [
56], which is mainly motivated by the prospect of an approaching retirement [
56]. There are also studies that show that there is a high peak of work stress among young people starting their professional life due to their lack of experience, which causes them to develop a strong insecurity when facing their work [
59]. Precisely, in this study, it has been found that these phenomena reported in the previous literature—high levels of work stress among the youngest and a decrease among the oldest—occur in an analogous way with respect to digital pandemic stress among Latin American professors, for whom, moreover, an intermediate age range can be distinguished—approximately between 40 and 55 years of age—in which the levels of pandemic stress are stationary. Consequently, the results show that the behavior of digital pandemic stress with respect to the age of Latin American professors can be explained by considering three age brackets—young professors, under 40 years; middle-aged professors, from 40 to 55 years; and senior professors, from 55 to 65 years—so that the strongest decreases in stress occur in the first and last brackets. Furthermore, it has been found that this dependence on the age of the professors is different for private and public university professors, the latter seeming to have made less effort to digitally integrate the elderly, which translates into a rise in their levels of digital stress.
Finally, it has been shown that university tenure is also an explanatory variable of the way in which digital pandemic stress has affected the different areas of knowledge. In particular, the professors at public universities who express the greatest digital pandemic stress are those in Health and Social Sciences and Engineering, while in public universities, the greatest digital pandemic stress is found among professors in Humanities. Previous literature had already found that digital stress is more prevalent among professors in areas that, in principle, make less frequent use of digital technologies, such as the Humanities [
7]. The novelty of the results obtained here lies in identifying that university tenure has a decisive influence on the way in which this digital stress affects the different areas of knowledge. In fact, in private universities, which are, in general, more intensely digitized than public universities [
28], the general trend shown by previous literature is broken and a higher level of pandemic digital stress of professors in areas, a priori, highly digitized, such as Health Sciences or Engineering, is found.
7. Conclusions
Professors from Latin American and Caribbean universities express having an intermediate–high self-concept of digital skills (above 3.5 out of 5) and intermediate levels of digital pandemic stress (above 2.5 out of 5). There is a moderate, but significant, positive influence of digital skills on the level of digital pandemic stress, so that professors with a higher self-concept of digital skills suffer more intense digital stress. No significant differences are identified between the mean levels of digital pandemic stress of professors at private and public universities, although professors at private universities have a self-concept of digital competence 6.1% higher than that of professors at public universities and a valuation of professional aspects linked to digitalization almost 13.3% higher than that of their colleagues at public universities. Moreover, in both types of universities, female professors report slightly higher levels of digital pandemic stress than male professors, although the difference with males is greater in public universities (around 5% in public universities and 0.7% in private universities).
The age of Latin American professors is an influential variable in the behavior of their digital pandemic stress levels. Specifically, digital stress decreases, in general, with increasing age. However, among professors at private universities, this decrease is more accelerated among professors younger than 40 years and older than 55 years, while it is approximately stationary among professors aged 40–55 years. In contrast, the digital stress of public university professors decreases with age until the age of 55, at which point digital stress begins an upward trend.
The main implications of this study are as follows: (i) it is necessary to reinforce the funding allocated by universities to teacher training in digital competence and the development of techno-pedagogical skills; (ii) in the process of integrating digital technologies, it is necessary to carry out measures to especially favor the incorporation of female professors, especially in public universities, where females present higher levels of digital stress; and (iii) to carry out specific training for older professors in order to incorporate them adequately into the digital integration process, especially in public universities, where the digital divide is notably more pronounced with respect to the levels of digital pandemic stress.