Does Covid-19 change the acceptance of virtual teaching for-mats in higher education? Implications for higher education development

Despite generous, widespread funding, digital media were scarcely used at universities in the German-speaking world before the Covid-19 crisis. There are many reasons for this, including a lack of acceptance by both lecturers and students. Personal contact limitations resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic forced the use of virtual teaching and learning formats. This paper analyses the influence of the Covid-19 crisis on the acceptance of digital teaching/learning formats by teachers and students based on the diffusion theory of ROGERS (2003). Twenty-five students and eight lecturers were interviewed, and a qualitative content analysis was then used to derive new findings and recommendations for the development of higher education.