The impact of Corona/Covid-19 on higher education is, at the time of writing, quite uncertain and to make any detailed predictions should be avoided. However, the pandemic could be seen as a catalyst for a rapid increase of online activities, and for a further digitalisation of higher education. Several changes that have been discussed for years have now been implemented in just a few weeks. Examples include online seminars, distance supervision, collaborative course development in video conferencing systems and online staff meetings. Not everything is better compared to the face-to-face alternatives, and in a global perspective the response to this new situation is diverse. As identified by Crawford et al. (2020), this is a continuum from higher education providers having no response at all, to pure social isolation strategies and rapid curriculum redevelopment to a fully online setup.
Furthermore, the experiences of this fast digitisation and digitalisation show huge variations due to different universities earlier curricula and blended learning design (Crawford et al, 2020). There also seems to exist different attitudes amongst academics and students towards the technological and pedagogical changes. The aim of this chapter is to discuss if these different attitudes could be related to the differences in existing blended learning models, and to differences in personality traits. Discussions on the variability in individuals' personalities are based on 'the five-factor model of personality' with the five main traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience (Jackson & Soto, 2015).