WHAT IS IT LIKE TO TEACH PHILOSOPHY ONLINE? EXPERIENCES AND SATISFACTION OF LECTURERS AT GERMAN UNIVERSITIES IN THE FIRST “CORONA SEMESTER”

In an online survey we conducted subsequently to the first so-called “Corona semester” we asked university lecturers in philosophy at German universities to share their experiences with digital teaching. In the questionnaire, the respondents were asked questions concerning the use of digital media in a specific course they taught and how satisfied they were with their course. We also asked them about the advantages and disadvantages of teaching philosophy online and about their assessment of whether the use of digital media is suitable for teaching philosophy. In our article, we present some of our findings based on the data and statements of 87 respondents. We identify the main factors influencing satisfaction with online teaching and point out some assumptions underlying the widespread fear that core elements might get lost by teaching philosophy online. In a second step we will discuss our findings and we will also derive recommendations from our results that may help to overcome key difficulties of teaching philosophy online.


Introduction
In Phaedrus, Socrates proclaims that philosophy requires direct discussion and therefore cannot be completely transferred into other media than face-to-face conversion. Similar views on the centrality of live discussions can also be found in the philosophy departments of today's universities and may lead some philosophers to take a sceptical view on the use of digital technologies (DT) in philosophy classes. DT include all types of software and hardware that enable the communication, access, transmission, and storage of data in a digital environment (Mercader/Gairín 2020). Those technologies are already common in vast areas of our society and now are also supposed to be used at universities (Schünemann/Budde 2018). Of course, such a development raises profound questions about the opportunities and the risks of using digital tools in university teaching. One main obstacle to answer those questions is that, apart from a small avant-garde, most lecturers in philosophy did not have too much experience with digital media in the classroom.
The situation changed completely in 2020 when universities had to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic and face-to-face teaching had to be transposed to online teaching. From one day to the next, universities all over Germany had to switch to the so-called "emergency remote teaching" (Watermeyer et al. 2020). In an online survey we conducted subsequently to the so-called first "Corona semester" 1 we wanted to take advantage of the collected experiences of university lecturers in philosophy at German universities. So far, there are only isolated reports on the use of digital media in philosophy courses, but no study that provides a systematic overview of experiences with online teaching and of lecturers' attitudes towards digital teaching. Such studies do exist for other areas (e.g., Amhag et al. 2019;Block 2018). Our study is intended to provide such an overview and, in addition, to enable a systematic analysis of some questions that are important from the perspective of didactics of philosophy.

Research Situation, Aims and Presuppositions of our Survey
While there are no studies on the use of digital media in higher education philosophy, there are some studies on their use in higher education in general. Some of those studies show that, while lecturers already use digital media for classroom management, they are still rarely integrated as a didactic tool in teaching. Approaches that focus on the use of DT by students enabling them to play an active role such as blogs, wikis, or interactive videos 2 are rare (Johnson et al. 2016;Berzosa/Arroyo 2016;Erlandsson 2016).
The EDUCAUSE study (Johnson et al. 2016) reveals some explanations for this situation. It shows that lecturers face significant technical, logistical, and pedagogical problems. The reluctance to use DT can be specifically attributed to a lack of time, a restrictive working environment, and lack of exchange with colleagues (Sjöberg/Lilja 2019). It requires time and opportunity to become familiar with the (usage of) new technologies. Another paper dealing with possible scenarios for the use of digital media in higher education concludes that whether digital media are used in teaching also depends on the respective subject cultures and the environment of the lecturer (Bremer 2017). As other studies show, the humanities tend to be more hostile to technology and not very open to innovation (Schiltz/Langlotz 2004). A particular skepticism towards digital teaching has been noted among them (Handke, 2020). This assessment was also empirically investigated: particular members of the Arts and Humanities experience numerous limitations that prevent them from integrating DT into their teaching (Mercader/Gairín 2020). Despite these conditions -or rather because of them -there are many calls for the increased use of digital media. For example, incentive systems were discussed to motivate lecturers to integrate DT into their teaching in a profitable and innovative way (Wannemacher 2007;Euler/Seufert 2005). In the literature on the didactics of philosophy, too, there are calls to use the possibilities of digital technologies in teaching in order to bring about a genuine engagement with digitisation (Brenneis/Daum 2021;Thein 2020;Krommer 2019;Schütze 2016). These studies, as well as the calls for the integration of digital technologies into higher education teaching, indicate that the possibilities of digital teaching are not yet being fully exploited, and could also speak to the fact that many philosophy lecturers do not have a positive attitude towards digital teaching.
It is against this background that we designed our study. Its aim is to find out how lecturers at German universities perceived digital teaching during the first "Corona semester". In addition, we also wanted to find out whether the lecturers, after the forced experience with online teaching, think that philosophy -contrary to the Socratic dictum mentioned at the beginning -can also be taught by digital means or whether they think that the loss of presence leads to a reduction in the quality of teaching. The total of 39 questions in the survey are divided according to these two basic questions.
First, we asked the respondents about the type of their course (lecture or seminar) and the way it was organised (synchronous or asynchronous). Further questions concerned the methods used in the event (joint live discussion, written answering of questions, creation of eportfolios, ...). The methods available for selection here are partly taken from the didactic literature (e.g., Brenneis/Daum 2021;Bremer 2017;Schütze 2016), and partly include the personal experiences of the authors, who themselves teach philosophy at universities. We then asked the subjects to rate how satisfied they were in each case with these approaches and their events overall. Because the studies mentioned at the beginning of this section gave us some clues as to which factors might be relevant for (dis-)satisfaction with digital teaching, we also asked about these factors. For this reason, we included questions about workload, age, technical problems, general satisfaction with the work as well as competences for dealing with DT in our survey in order to be able to assess how much these factors influence satisfaction with digital teaching. Because in many conversations with colleagues, the effort required to prepare digital teaching as well as the problems in maintaining contact with students were repeatedly mentioned, we also included these factors in our survey.
Our second research interest concerns the assessment of the influence of the digital medium on the quality of teaching. Here we asked the respondents what they saw as the advantages and disadvantages of digital teaching for philosophy; whether they thought it would lead to more or less efficiency, to a better understanding of philosophical theories, to more independence among students and to an increase of school-like teaching at universities ("Verschulung des Studiums"). 3 These possible concerns were again mentioned in many conversations among colleagues, which was reason enough for us to include them in our survey.
The questionnaire concludes with questions about gender and age, place and type of employment, and length of time the lecturers teach at universities.
We chose the means of an empirical study because in this way we can find out whether the assessments of digital teaching that we encounter in conversations with colleagues are really widely shared, or whether they are merely idiosyncratic judgements. In addition, on the basis of a broad sample we can draw conclusions that are not only based on the intuitions of single individuals.
However, this also means that our survey is based solely on the opinions of the lecturers surveyed. We neither interviewed students nor checked whether the goals of the teaching philosophy that the lecturers wanted to achieve were actually achieved. Nevertheless, we believe that conclusions can be drawn about the conditions for success of digital teaching from our findings. Such conclusions can be justified by the assumption that lecturers' satisfaction correlates with the outcome of their efforts and that lecturers are not completely wrong in their assessments. Therefore, we consider it plausible to recommend methods if the lecturers were satisfied with the application of these methods. We have also assumed that lecturers draw on their experience of face-to-face teaching to judge success or failure in digital teaching, without any independent research into the success or failure of the face-to-face teaching in question.
Here, too, we trust the self-assessment of the lecturers.
One last point has to be mentioned: in our survey, we did not presuppose any particular understanding of what philosophy is or should be. We used the term "philosophy" in the questionnaire without further definition, so that everyone could base their answers on their own understanding of philosophy. This allows us to draw general conclusions from our survey, but it also means that we cannot conclude from our survey that certain concepts of philosophy are better suited to digital teaching than others.

Method and Sample
In order to be able to survey university teachers nationwide, the link to the online survey was sent by e-mail to the philosophy departments of German universities at the end of November 2020, with the request that it be forwarded to all lecturers in the philosophy department. In addition, the link was shared through mailing lists provided by "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie" and "Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie" in order to recruit as many lecturers as possible.
The survey was conducted online via the portal "Limesurvey" and took the participants about 20 minutes. Participation was voluntary for all respondents and was not remunerated. The participants were assured of the anonymity of their data beforehand. We attached the university's privacy policy, which explains in detail how personal data is processed. All participants had to give their consent to the data protection declaration in order to be forwarded to the survey.
In the questionnaire, the respondents were asked questions concerning the use of digital media in a specific course they taught during the first Corona semester. In case of uncertainty about some of the questions, participants were asked to choose the answer most likely to apply to them.
In total, 123 participants attended the survey of which 87 could be included in the analysis after excluding incomplete questionnaires and outliers. Of the 87 participants, 49 were male, 31 female, 2 divers, 5 not specified. The age of the test subjects ranges from 26 to 69, on average they were 42.5 years old. Lecturers at state universities from 13 federal states are represented. Most participants work as research assistants ("Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter:innen", 38.2%) or professors (23.6%), but associate lecturers ("Lehrbeauftragte", 10.1%) and academic councillors ("Akademische:r Rät:in", 5.6%) are also represented. 58.4% stated that they had a fixed-term contract, 31.5% an open-ended contract. Most of the participants already have had several years of teaching experience at colleges or universities, only 14.3% of the respondents stated that they had less than 3 years of teaching experience. Our sample therefore has some positive characteristics that allow us to draw quite generally valid and generalisable conclusions: the proportion of female and male test persons is fairly balanced, there is a broad age spectrum, the test persons come from most German federal states and work in different employment relationships. A search on the homepages of universities in Germanspeaking countries revealed that more than 1500 lecturers teach philosophy. This means that our survey represents a broad sample, but we cannot say to what extent it is truly representative of the entire teaching staff at German-speaking universities.

General Findings
In order to be able to classify the information provided by the individual respondents, we first asked them about their general job satisfaction. Six items from the questionnaire "Subjective satisfaction and stress of work and occupation" (Weyer et al. 2014) were used for this purpose. Overall, respondents say that they tend to think they enjoy their job more than other people (81%), that they are quite satisfied with their current job (75.6%) and that they would not change jobs if they could (92%). At the same time, 56% of the respondents say that they think their work is too much for them and 58% feel under constant pressure at work. Not quite half (46%) feel that they are sometimes unable to cope with the demands that work places on them. The respondents thus indicate high values regarding their satisfaction but feel highly stressed at the same time.
The next questions dealt with the types of learning events. Of the participants surveyed, 64% stated that they had held a seminar ("Seminar") or similar, 2% a lecture ("Vorlesung") or similar and 33% had held both types of events. The lecturers were asked about their satisfaction with their seminars (n=80) and/or lectures (n=28). Seminars scored slightly better than the lectures in the individual evaluation of working conditions (58% versus 52% (rather) satisfied) and the achievement of learning objectives (80% versus 70% (rather) satisfied). In the overall evaluation, seminars with 63% ((rather) satisfied) and lectures with 62% ((rather) satisfied) are close to each other.
Based on these three evaluation criteria for seminars and lectures -satisfaction with working conditions; satisfaction with the achievement of learning objectives; and the overall evaluation -we created a scale that aims to capture the lecturer's work satisfaction in the specified Corona semester. In the following, this item is abbreviated as "satisfaction"; unless otherwise stated, it always refers to the lecturer's work satisfaction in the Corona semester. This 4-level scale, like the preceding individual items, ranges from "very satisfied" (=1) to "not at all satisfied" (=4). Cronbach's alpha was calculated for all of the six items in order to determine internal consistency which was in fact excellent, with α= .91. This means that the scale excellently maps the latent construct we have named satisfaction (with teaching in the Corona semester). This serves as a central measure for data evaluation in the further course of this stocktaking.
The following questions concerned the synchronicity of the courses. About one third of the lectures (n=31) were held synchronously, one third asynchronously and one third partially synchronously. The seminars held (n=80) were conducted synchronously by 56%, (n=46) asynchronously by 16% (n=14) and partially synchronously by 26% (n=20) of the test subjects. Synchronously here means that the event is held as a regular live session. Asynchronously means that the materials can be streamed or downloaded so that the students can work on them regardless of the time. Partially synchronously means that those two modes were used alternately.
Since hardly any of the test persons held lectures exclusively, the seminars are used to test whether one of the forms of synchronicity is superior to the others. For this purpose, a onefactor ANOVA is used to test whether the form of synchronicity leads to different levels of satisfaction with the teaching in the seminars. Satisfaction with teaching was higher with partial synchrony (M= 2.55, SD= .69) than with asynchrony (M=2.38, SD= .98) and lowest with synchrony (M=2.12, SD= .53) (see figure 1). However, the difference between the groups is not statistically significant F (2,77) = 3.06, p= 0.53.

Figure 1. Satisfaction and forms of synchronicity
The participants were also asked about the teaching methods they used in their seminars. The following methods were used most frequently: having students answer reflective questions; written discussion in an online-forum; joint commenting on a text; and having students themselves create reflective questions. These were predominantly evaluated positively; only "joint discussion in a forum" was rated as "very good" or "rather good" by only 46%.
The questionnaire also included questions about various aspects of the communication with students. Most significant for communication with students were emails (92%), the forums of university platforms (80%), and conference platforms (79%). Telephone calls (11%) and messenger services (3%) seem to play only a subordinate role. 14% of respondents had the opportunity to communicate with students in person despite contact restrictions. Respondents were also asked to indicate how the amount of contact had changed compared to a "normal", non-Corona semester. 2.4% had "much more" contact with the students, 15.7% "rather more". For the majority contact has tended to decrease: 57.8% have "rather less" contact, 24.1% "much less". We also asked whether the virtual contact was able to adequately replace the personal contact. The lecturers with (rather) more contact agreed more strongly with the statement that virtual contact could adequately replace face-to-face contact (M= 2.13, SD= .640) than those with (rather) less contact (M= 3.09, SD= .805). The different assessment of contact with students is statistically significant, t(81)= 4.30, p < .001. More contact thus has a positive effect on the assessment of communication with students.
The next topic of our survey was the workload. None of the respondents said that they have needed less time for their work as a result of digital teaching. For 14%, the amount of work has remained "about the same", for 38% it has increased "somewhat". 47% of the respondents stated that they have "much more" workload. In addition, the lecturers were asked about their assessment of how the workload might have changed for the students. 6% stated that in their estimation students have "somewhat less" workload, 38% assume it has remained "about the same". 32% think that students would have "somewhat more" workload and 15% assume "much more" (see figure 2).

Figure 2. Assessed workload (in %)
There were also some questions concerning technical problems and competences. It was not specified whether this referred to the technical difficulties of the learners or the lecturers. Thus, all disturbances could be mentioned independently of their sources. 24.1% reported that their computers were not sufficiently equipped or too slow, 28.6% had problems with a slow internet connection. Of the respondents, 30.1% report being overstrained by the programs and platforms they used and 33.3% report that these platforms have been frequently overburdened.
In order to capture an impression of the competences in dealing with challenges in the technical field, three items from the "Short Scale Technology Willingness" (Neyer et al. 2016) were used. With regard to technology acceptance, only 10% said they found dealing with technology "rather difficult" and 5% reported fears of breaking it by using it. About 46% report a (rather) higher technology control conviction. Overall, one can therefore say that lecturers feel confident in their use of technology.
The respondents were also asked whether they had taken part in courses offered by the educational institution for further training in "digital teaching". Of the respondents (n=82), 35% reported that they had taken part in such an offer, 65% said they had not. Of the respondents who had attended such an offer, 79% said they were "satisfied" or "rather satisfied" with the offer overall. The teaching of new competences was rated as (rather) satisfactory by 79%, and the methodological approach of those courses by 70%. The respondents were particularly positive about the practical relevance (90% (rather) satisfied)). 64% rated the responsiveness to the individual's level of knowledge as (rather) satisfactory. The respondents who did not take advantage of the offer were asked why this was not the case. The reason given by 35% was that no interest was "rather relevant" or "decisive". 57.1% stated that they had no need for such training, 69% that they had no time or opportunity to participate. For 75%, the decisive factor was that there was no interesting offer for them. The existence or lack of offers does not seem to be decisive, 73% report that this was (rather) irrelevant.
Because it is possible that lecturers who attend courses on digital teaching at their university are better prepared for the corresponding challenges, we wanted to identify whether attending training courses in the field of digital teaching has had a positive effect on the assessment of the feasibility of digital teaching. To do this, we compared the average reported agreement of the group of people who have attended such training with the group of people who have not attended training. 4 The assessment that philosophy could not be taught digitally (1= agree, 4= disagree) was somewhat higher among persons who had attended a training course (M=2.31, SD= .89) than among persons who had not attended a training course (M= 2.50, SD= 1.0). Thus, those who have attended training tend to believe less strongly that philosophy can be taught digitally. However, this difference is not statistically significant, t(79)= -.85, p= .398. Attending a training course on digital teaching also did not show a change in affinity for technology (M= 2.47, SD= .55 with training; M= 2.37, SD= .53 without training, t(79) = .809, p= .421) or satisfaction with teaching in the Corona semester (M= 2.27; SD= .59 with training; M= 2.30, SD= .74 without training, t(80) = -.167, p= .868).

What Influences Satisfaction with Online Teaching?
In order to investigate which factors influence satisfaction with digital teaching, we have created the variable satisfaction with teaching which includes assessments of working conditions, the achievement of teaching goals, and an overall assessment of the seminars and lectures -see previous section. Based in part on the literature, we have identified six possible factors that may influence satisfaction with teaching: the high workload and balancing teaching and research are well-known challenges for academics. A high workload is associated with job dissatisfaction, but also lower work performance among academics (Miller 2019;Kenny 2018;Houston et al. 2006). We therefore included workload as a possible predictor of satisfaction. The next possible factor is age. Stereotypically, older people are seen as having low skills in using technology while people born after 1980 are called "digital natives". These are considered competent in using DT (Prensky 2001). In order to see the effect of age on satisfaction with digital teaching, we included it as a possible predictor. The considerations on age lead to the possible predictor of technical problems. The emergence of technical problems could lead to increased frustration at work when it is largely digitised. Sjöberg and Lilja (2019) report an ambivalence of lecturers at universities towards the digital transformation, which is also rooted in problems in the use of DT. We therefore wanted to investigate whether the occurrence of technical problems has an impact on satisfaction. The next point is the contact with students. The hypothesis here is that reduced contact with students leads to lower satisfaction, whereas a lot of contact with the students could speak for a successful implementation of the DT and for increased exchange. So, we include contact with students as a possible predictor in the model. In order to differentiate satisfaction in the Corona semester from general job satisfaction, we included the latter as a possible predictor. The perception of one's competence in dealing with DT could influence job satisfaction. High technical competence could condition highly perceived self-efficacy, which is related to job satisfaction (Machmud 2018). Therefore, technical competence is included in the model as a sixth possible predictor.
To find out which of these factors had an influence on satisfaction with teaching, we calculated a Multiple Linear Regression which allows us not only to observe the influence of a single variable, but also to examine a complex network of influencing variables. Our regression model 5 shows that the occurrence of technical problems (β= -.28, p= .009), the amount of contact with students (β=.40, p<.001) and the workload (β=-.23, p=.030) are significant predictors of satisfaction, F (6,64)= 6.103, p< .001.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Teaching
A further theme of our survey is the lecturers' assessments of the advantages and disadvantages of teaching philosophy online. The following possible advantages were identified in advance: the possibility of a more flexible time management; the possibility of saving time; the possibility of having more structure in the courses, the possibility of being locally independent, and the possible encouragement to use more diverse methods. In practice, the more flexible time management has proven to be (rather) advantageous for 79%, but only 21% report this for time saving. But this does not mean the respondents actually saved time: time saving has been perceived to be "rather disadvantageous" for 45% and even "very disadvantageous" for 34%. 57% report an advantage due to a better structuring of the courses, 43% perceive this point as (rather) disadvantageous. The independence of location (91%) and the encouragement to use more diverse methods (77%) turn out to be particularly advantageous (see figure 3). We identified the following possible disadvantages of online teaching in advance: the tendency to have too much structure in the courses, the possibility of being confronted with technical problems, the lack of social interaction, the more passive participation of students, the lack of visual communication (facial expressions, gestures). Only 19.7% said that the overstructuring of courses was a problem. About half of the respondents had problems of a technical nature: 51.2% reported problems here, only 6% said they had no problems at all. Regarding the social aspects, almost two thirds rated the lack of social interaction as "very problematic" and 23% as "rather problematic". 3% rate it as "not problematic". The lack of visual communication is rated as disadvantageous by 82%. Problems due to a more passive participation of students were reported by 80%.
Further questions concerned the participants' estimation of some consequences of teaching philosophy online. Of those surveyed, 59.5% (tend to) agree that the digitisation of teaching leads to a further increase of "Verschulung". 81% (tend to) disagree with the claim that the digitisation of teaching leads to more efficiency in teaching. 39% of the respondents think that digital teaching will lead to more independence of students, and about half (45%) (tend to) assume that the digitisation of teaching will lead to a long-term reduction of face-toface teaching.
Another big question is if teaching philosophy online instead of teaching philosophy in presence has effects on the students' understanding of what is important in philosophy, viz. of what the point of philosophy is. These subject-specific, content-related challenges of philosophical education were surveyed as follows: to get a clue we framed the three items "development of a feeling for philosophising", "greater understanding of philosophical problems/theory" and "positive influence on the understanding of philosophy" that were intended to measure students' subject-specific skills. 75% of the participants (tend to) agree that the digitisation of teaching leads to a decreased development of a feeling for philosophy, 92% (tend to) disagree that it leads to a greater understanding of philosophical problems/theories on the part of students. Only 3% of the respondents assume that digital teaching has a (rather) positive influence on the understanding of philosophy. As a last closed question, the respondents were asked about their agreement with the following statement: "The subject of philosophy is not suitable to be taught online." Here, 19.8% of the respondents stated that they agreed with the statement, 54.7% somewhat agreed, 31.4% somewhat disagreed, and 14% disagreed with the statement. Some participants took up this question in a final free comment they were allowed to give. Most of those comments indicate that participants think that the question must be answered depending on the framework conditions of digital teaching. 6 We used multiple linear regression to test how the assessment of these possible changes affects satisfaction with teaching in general and the assessment that philosophy in particular is suitable to be taught digitally. We first investigated which assumptions significantly predict satisfaction with teaching. In our model 7 , only the ones who assume that digital teaching will lead to a decrease of efficiency are less satisfied with teaching in the Corona semester, F (7,58) = 3.064, p= .008. In other words: people who assume that digital teaching will become more efficient are also more satisfied and vice versa (β = .31, p= .019).
We also investigated which assumptions significantly predict that respondents assess that philosophy is not suitable to be taught digitally. In our model 8 , two predictors are significant. Strong agreement with the assumption that digital teaching will lead to an increase of school-like teaching at universities (β = .28, p= .039) as well as strong agreement with the assumption that digital teaching will lead to a lower development of the feeling for philosophising (β= .31, p= .043) predicts the assumption that philosophy is less suitable to be taught digitally F (7, 57) = 7.464, p < .001. This means that the persons who fear an increase of "Verschulung" as well as those who fear a decreasing feeling for philosophising through online teaching thus think that philosophy is not suitable to be taught digitally.
There were also some open questions in our survey which allowed the participants to articulate themselves freely. We use the answers given to those questions as supplements in our discussion.

Discussion
In this section we will discuss our findings and we will also derive some recommendations for the implementation of DT in higher education teaching of philosophy. As we have seen, the workload, the occurence of technical problems and the amount of contact to students predict 6 Two examples for such comments: "Being forced to teach digitally without enough time to prepare was not the best starting point to immediately take advantage of digital teaching. However, after I jumped over my shadow, did some research and tried out a few things, I was able to discover many tools of digital teaching that I would not want to do without in the future." Another participant wrote: "Improved digital teaching starts with improved employment conditions for teachers." 7 All variables are included in one step. A significance level of 5% was set. The R² for the overall model was .27 (adjusted R² = .18), indicative for a moderate to high goodness-of-fit according to Cohen (1988). The variables "Verschulung" (β= -.23, p= .148), lower development of a feeling for philosophising (β= .05, p= .777), greater understanding of philosophical problems (β= .21, p= .162), independence of the students (β= .03, p= .847), the abolition of face-to-face-learning in the long run (β= -.13, p= .261), and positive influence on the understanding of philosophy (β= .03, p= .814) do not significantly influence satisfaction. 8 All variables are included in one step. A significance level of 5% was set. With R² = .48 (adjusted R² = .41), the model has a high variance explanation (Cohen 1988). The other assumptions -that digital teaching changes the efficiency (β= -.02, p= .833), greater understanding of philosophical problems (β= -.12, p= .363), that it strengthens the independence of students (β= -.10, p= .366), that it leads to the abolition of face-to-face-learning in the long run (β= .15, p= .135), and that is has positive influence on the understanding of philosophy (β= -.20, p= .874)had no significant influence. the satisfaction of lecturers during the online semester, whereas satisfaction is an item based on satisfaction with working conditions, with the achievement of learning objectives and the overall evaluation with seminars and lectures. Therefore, we start with some remarks about these factors. Furthermore, we will take a look at the didactic procedures mentioned by the participants within the philosophy courses. We will discuss the approval of these procedures as well as the opportunities and limitations for digital university teaching mentioned by the participants.
The workload was mentioned as a significant factor in relation to the respondents' satisfaction. Our study points out that the use of digital teaching formats led to an increase in workload for the majority of the respondents. This result confirms other findings such as those of Kleine and Müller (2020) who report that lecturers at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern had a very high workload in the summer semester 2020. According to them, the reasons for the continuing increase in workload are primarily to be seen in the pandemic-related and unprepared adaptations of the teaching formats and therefore a high administrative effort. Certainly, using and working with DTs requires a general competence as well as a routine in dealing with them, which must be developed individually over a period of time, and it is crucial for lecturers to find suitable, digitally implementable methods, platforms, and formats for themselves and for their respective courses (Handke 2020). However, once a routine, method, platform, and format have been found, it can be assumed that the high workload factor will be reduced. The high workload should thus not be seen in all cases as justification for a complete return to analog and traditional forms of teaching in future post-pandemic times. In addition to the aspects mentioned, the high workload can be counteracted by different digital measures depending on the respective format.
According to Handke (2020) and Wipper and Schulz (2021), the amount of work required to reuse materials is massively reduced after the very high effort exhibited during the initial production. Moreover, the time needed for revision is also being reduced in the long run. But it should be pointed out that the reuse of materials is not possible in all philosophy courses. With regard to digitised lectures (recorded as a video), which are firmly anchored in the course catalogue and offered on a recurring basis, it can certainly be assumed that the materials created can continue to be used in future years. However, if one assumes seminars or exercises that regularly change thematically and thus also in terms of content, it is not that easy to fall back on materials that have already been created. In this case, lecturers can resort to methods and digital procedures that have previously proven successful, but in many cases content and materials must be created from scratch, which can be very time-consuming -especially if the person is solely responsible for their courses.
According to Handke (2020) and Bremer (2017), the exchange with colleagues might be helpful in reducing the workload (e.g., creating materials, finding the right platform and methods as well as coping with general difficulties). This was also reported in the comments from lecturers in our survey. Among other things, one respondent wrote in response to an open question about further advantages and disadvantages that there was "more exchange with colleagues about sensible teaching formats and strategies for dealing with the unfamiliar situation". This exchange does not have to stop at discussions about the teaching format and situation. The digitisation teaching materials (e.g. (interactive) videos, wikis or blogs created within the seminar) also offer the opportunity for a cross-university exchange of content.
Materials can be shared with each other as OER. 9 Furthermore, wikis or blogs started within the seminar can be shared or further used by other universities, departments, or colleagues. On the one hand, cooperation can contribute to workload reduction, and on the other hand, it leads to a more intense information exchange between universities, departments, and seminars, causing a higher chance for feedback, improvement, and expansion -e.g., by exchanging literature references and bringing each other's attention to technical problems and errors. However, this is only possible if lecturers offer insight into their materials and procedures, which is much easier across universities in the digital space than in completely analogue teaching.
The second significant factor in relation to the respondents' satisfaction was the amount of contact with students. The respondents cited the lack of social interaction as the greatest difficulty in relation to this factor. Furthermore, the more passive participation of students and the lack of visual communication were also rated as major problems (see figure 4). This offers a lot of room for frustration, as can also be seen in the answers to the open questions. One respondent noted that many students participated in events without a camera or microphone: "The cause may be doubtful in the smartphone age, but you can't check it." Other respondents named the difficulties: " [T]here is no substitute for personal contact", "it is difficult to assess students' learning progress and interests without personal contact" or "discussion in presence is irreplaceable". The problem of students participating in events without a camera or microphone can be partially counteracted by a self-imposed seminar etiquette or the university's technical support. But it should also be noted here that many students cannot be required to participate in a seminar with a camera due to their local privacy, or that not all students have a place of retreat where they can or want to turn on the camera undisturbed without other family members or the entire 9 Open Educational Resources (OER) are free educational materials that are licensed under an open license, such as Creative Commons or GNU General Public License. These license types allow free access as well as free use, editing, and redistribution of the materials by others with little or no restrictions. The creators themselves determine which usage rights they grant (Kirchgässer 2018).  (Buhr 2020). However, active participation by students can also take place without a camera.
Even in times when personal contact is not permitted due to hygienic measures, one can nonetheless try to strengthen the contact to students. In accordance with the literature, we advise optional video conferences and live chats as an additional possibility to exchange information, in addition to regularly held synchronous sessions (Handke 2020). Those conferences or life chats might facilitate teamwork and tutorial support on a regular basis. Providing space for exchange among students, the lecturer does not necessarily have to attend. Certainly, these sessions cannot replace personal contact, but nevertheless offer the possibility of more intensive student support as well as the development of a sense of belonging within the learning group.
One possibility to track the students' learning progress is regular formative assessment, testing their knowledge and understanding of a particular topic. As possible tasks, students can work out possible positions and arguments of a philosophical text, summarize the text in their own words or explain terms relevant to the text. The use of test scenarios has at least two potentials. On the one hand, the instructor gets an overview of the students' learning status and can thus adapt to the student's needs in the next session or assignment. On the other hand, the test scenarios offer students the opportunity to receive constructive feedback through a face-toface digital conversation with the instructor or a written message. The feedback can encourage and motivate students in their learning and work process (Wipper/Schulz 2021;Luft 2019). Basically, it should be noted that the use of feedback procedures and formative testing scenarios in digital or digitally supported learning spaces is essential to counteract the risk of under-or overachievement (Green/Green 2005). Even though this approach has proven useful, it should be noted that it requires a lot of time from lecturers -especially in very large seminar groupspossibly worsening their workload, since in philosophy not only the number of tasks to be examined is very extensive, but also writing individual messages or conducting individual discussions is very time-consuming. To get around this problem, students can alternatively give each other constructive feedback in different social forms (groups; learning tandems), so that instructors must only intervene in case of gross errors in content. This approach can also strengthen students' sense of involvement in online phases, leading to an increase in individual engagement (Wipper/Schulz 2021).
The occurrence of technical problems also had an impact on the overall satisfaction with teaching. Such problems can arise for both lecturers and for learners. As far as those problems are a result of a lack of experience and knowledge of lecturers in using modern DT, one antidote can be to strengthen their professional development in the field of DT. This recommendation also fits to the findings of Mercader and Gairín (2020). They show that the reasons why lecturers do not use DT are mainly that there are professional barriers (such as a lack of time, a lack of training, …) and not individual characteristic (such as the thought that "I just can't cope with modern technology").
We now come to the further results of our survey. The focus here is primarily on the methodological procedure in the courses in relation to the satisfaction of the lecturers. Regarding the design of lectures and seminars, it is shown, although not significantly, but nevertheless descriptively statistically, that a partially synchronous design of the seminars ensured the highest satisfaction among the respondents. Semi-synchronous formats are therefore recommended as the optimal course design. Live sessions provide structure for lecturers and students, offering room for verbal exchange. At the same time, asynchronous digital formats have advantages, too: digital lectures can be paused or watched repeatedly, for example, helping learners absorb information and encouraging them to carefully formulate concrete questions that can be clarified later on (Merkt 2015). This approach is in line with Luft's suggestion to modernise the 90-minute lecture and to include discussion parts as well as breaks in the lecture, although the focus of the lecture should still be on the lecturer's presentation (Luft 2019). This suggests that hybrid formats, i.e., a mixture of online and faceto-face formats, should also be used when face-to-face teaching is resumed in order to combine the specific advantages of face-to-face and online events (Berg 2021;Ebner 2020).
The results of the survey on the didactic methods used show that the frequency of use and the level of approval with the methods do diverge significantly (see figure 5). While written discussion in the forum is one of the more frequently used methods, it is comparatively unpopular. Only 46% (rather) approve of this method. Lecturers should refrain from trying to simply translate methods that work in analogue into a digital format. According to Handke (2020), the goal of digitisation must be to do what is didactically desired, not what is technically feasible. It is not the technologies that should provide the framework for didactics, but vice versa. In other words, those didactic methods should be used that exploit the specific value of digital technologies. This does not mean that a written discussion in the forum is fundamentally impossible. However, it must be kept in mind that students need much more support for written philosophizing -for example, in form of defined criteria for a good text contribution, text examples, and through feedback. It can be assumed that at least some bad experiences with the written forum can be attributed to the fact that students were not sufficiently prepared for it. Nonetheless, there is the chance to use the written forum as a place where students train themselves in philosophical writing, which tends to be practiced poorly in face-to-face courses (Luft 2019). Our survey shows that innovative methods that make use of the specific value of digital technologies -such as the creation of explanatory videos, podcasts, or e-portfolios -were used only by a minority (9%-14%). However, these innovative methods were rated as (rather) good by more than 90%. We therefore would like to encourage the use of such innovative methods such as, for example, blog seminar or the use of wikis (Noller 2019).
Such innovative methods may also contribute to the decrease of workload. For example, a teaching concept developed by the Tübingen School of Education shows the conditions under which an innovative integration of computer-based feedback programs in philosophy is possible. Within a seminar designed according to the flipped classroom method, the students were given the task of writing explanations of the central themes of the texts they had read, which are also comprehensible to 16-year-old students, without them having to resort to further materials. Immediately following the writing process, students received computer-based graphical feedback (through the open-source application CohViz 10 ) on, among other things, the coherence of their explanation. Based on the feedback, students were able to revise their explanation again. By writing the explanation they trained their explanation competence on the one hand, and on the other hand they gained a deeper insight into the subject matter. In the attendance phase, the students' explanations were discussed on a content level and the students received further feedback from their fellow students. Furthermore, the seminar was used to clarify and discuss questions of the students on content-related aspects of the text (Lachner et al. 2021).
Although it was positively evaluated that the Corona Semester encouraged the use of more diverse methods, on the whole the lecturers seem to have perceived their work as timeconsuming and inefficient. This thesis is also supported by the fact that the fear that digital teaching will lead to a decrease of efficiency was identified as a significant predictor of satisfaction with teaching. Those who perceived their work as particularly inefficient were also particularly dissatisfied.
The findings discussed so far suggest that training for the use of DT in teaching could help lecturers to mitigate the problems mentioned. But our results do not support such a conclusion, at least at first glance. More than a third of the respondents had attended further training in the area of digital teaching. The majority of respondents rated this training positively. Attending such a training course did not, however, have any effect on our respondents' satisfaction with teaching, their affinity for technology, or their assessment of whether philosophy could be taught digitally. There were even tendencies for this assessment to be lower among those who attended the training. One reason for this may be that such training courses can no more remedy a poor internet connection than they can remedy the specific problems of digital emergency solutions in the Corona semesters. It is also possible that the training courses were not subject-specific enough. In this case, the lesson would be that training should be more subject-specific. It should focus more concretely on possible uses of digital teaching formats and digitisation in the respective subject area in order to show lecturers new methods and possibilities of how they can support, supplement and make their teaching more efficient with DT. The presentation of concrete digital teaching formats on philosophical questions could be such a subject-specific example. At this point, however, it must be noted that there is only a small number of publications on the didactics of philosophy in higher 10 https://www.tuedilb-tuebingen.de/materialien.html#pane-3 education in the german-speaking area and therefore a corresponding research desideratum (Luft 2019).
Another explanation for this in some respect surprising result may be that the respondents fear that such training courses also can have negative effects. After all, those who fear "Verschulung" rate the opportunities for philosophy in digital teaching formats lower. The fear that courses on digital teaching can lead to a growing "Verschulung" could explain the surprising finding that those who have attended such training courses tend to think that philosophy cannot be taught digitally. The respondents to our survey do not fear that there is the danger that teaching in presence will be abolished, but they do fear a change in the form of teaching. With the discussion of the specific role of universities as educational institutions, a well-known fundamental discussion about the design of university teaching is opening up (Zierer 2020).
The statement that philosophy cannot be taught digitally is also more common among those who think that digital teaching leads to a loss of "feeling for philosophising". This might again be an expression of the thought that a live discussion cannot be replaced adequately. "Philosophers live on discussion", "Philosophy lives from critical debate" are examples of comments from respondents who frequently report a lack of opportunities for interaction and discussion. We tend to interpret those statements to mean that such live discussion cannot be adequately replaced by using digital media. The opportunity to discuss in presence with each other may be, as Socrates already proclaimed, a central feature to philosophy that points to the limits of digital teaching.
This again points to what we have mentioned already. The goal of a digitisation of teaching should not be to replace teaching in presence altogether. Rather, its aim should be seen as opening up opportunities to supplement teaching in presence with sensibly selected digital elements. Based on the results of the study and their discussion, we see the sensible use of digital elements in the possibilities of writing and the use of innovative methods. These approaches can be integrated into teaching in presence as an asynchronous element, for example. Students can write small texts in a forum, blog posts, wikis or e-portfolios based on reading assignments for the respective course or on a topic from the course, and podcasts and explanatory videos can be produced. Based on the students' contributions, lecturers can already adjust the structure of the course to the needs and interests of the students before the synchronous teaching in presence. However, when using these procedures in combination with teaching in presence, lecturers must also consider the support and feedback measures already described. The implementation of these measures by the lecturers increases the learning effectiveness for the students. In addition, however, lecturers can also create digital products and make them available to students to prepare for or support teaching in presence. The various digital products can not only be used in the respective course, but also offer the possibility of dissemination, discussion and subsequent use in other courses or other universities.

Conclusion
The results of our survey provide an overview of how philosophy lecturers assess the success of digital teaching in the first Corona semester. Many problems are revealed, some of which were already known before the pandemic, while others are new. We have tried to show ways to counter these problems, and we have pointed out to some features of the traditional way of teaching philosophy that may not be adequately replaced by digital teaching. Beyond that, we also point out some advantages that go with the integration of digital elements. With the help of DT, face-to-face teaching in particular can be expanded by some elements that are very useful from a didactic point of view. Further research must show whether the use of such hybrid formats is satisfactory.
Of course, our survey represents nothing more than a snapshot of very special circumstances. Because it took place directly after the first Corona semester, into which all lecturers went more or less unprepared, it was to be expected that the sudden switch to digital teaching would cause many problems and that this would lead to a tendency towards negative judgements about digital teaching. It will therefore be interesting to find out whether lecturers' attitudes towards digital teaching have changed after the third or fourth Corona semester. Possibly, through their experiences with online teaching, lecturers have found ways to counter the problems and make use of the possible advantages. If that is the case, have they changed their didactic methods and thus achieved better results? What methods have they resorted to? Have they found ways to get into closer contact with students? Have they succeeded in holding successful philosophical discussions with the help of digital media? Are they now more satisfied with digital teaching than they were in the first Corona semester? Even now that faceto-face teaching is possible again, do lecturers integrate digital elements into their courses? These are all questions that should be explored in further studies and which then can help to properly assess the opportunities and risks of digital teaching in philosophy. Our survey can be a base for such future empirical research.