The New Ergonomic Paradigm for Academic Learning Environments During Covid-19 Lockdown

The COVID-19 virus proliferated from its first emergence to a global phenomenon becoming a pandemic as declared by the World Health Organization on 11th March 2020. This sanitary emergency obliged people to suddenly face several changes in their way of life due to imposed countries’ lockdown and social distancing. One of these rapid changes involved schools and universities and, consequently, students and professors: with the sudden lockdown of universities and colleges worldwide, they had to turn the traditional “in presence” classes into online courses. A published survey among Italian academic staff and students allowed to identify and highlight the factors that affect ergonomics of workstation (learning and teaching workplace), postural and environmental comfort and teaching/learning effectiveness. This paper would like to give guidelines to set the right home environment and the timing of learning/teaching activities to improve global comfort, both for students and teachers, and improve learning effectiveness. Thirty-Five Master Degree students were involved in the experiment during the second-semester lessons (during Italian lockdown) and were asked to fill questionnaires and check their learning outcomes by answering multiple-choice tests. Data were statistically processed, and results were used to create guidelines to set the learning home-environment at best, where and when possible.