In a large-scale study conducted after the first, ERT period at the University of Szeged involving 3,500 participants, the researchers were interested in the students’ experiences with the university’s transition to online education with an additional focus on teachers’ perceived performance (Majó-Petri et al., 2021). Half of the participants signalled that the university managed the transition well, but 60% of the participants perceived that they had to invest more time into studying (Majó-Petri et al., 2021), which might have been the result of instructors’ overcompensating for the lack of personal classes with home assignments. Additionally, almost half of the participants expressed that they struggled to keep to deadlines compared to their ability to meet deadlines under normal circumstances (Majó-Petri et al., 2021). 40% of the learners also experienced technological difficulties with the platforms and programmes used to implement online education, and half of these students (ca. 700 students) could not solve their technology-related problems without help (Majó-Petri et al., 2021). These results signal that several online platforms the instructors turned to have never been used by the university prior to online education, or that the use of such platforms was not endorsed (by teachers and learners) under normal circumstances. In the future, it would generally be worthwhile experimenting with how technological alternatives might complement traditional teaching and learning processes, which could also result in a constant readiness for any sudden transitions and could also ensure familiarity with the alternative environment.

The phenomenon that some instructors substituted synchronous online classes entirely with home assignments has been pointed out by other scholars too (Fekete, 2020a; Kóris & Pál, 2021). This resonates with the growing need to develop teachers’ general assessment literacy (Csépes, 2019; 2021; Vogt et al., 2020) in a way that both their pedagogical knowledge (how much they know about assessment) and technological pedagogical knowledge (how much they know about online or asynchronous online assessment practices) develop simultaneously. University teachers around the globe reported that the least effective assessment methods during the online teaching periods proved to have been closed tests, translation tasks, and online role-playing, whereas the most effective ones were portfolio and project tasks (Kóris & Pál, 2021). These findings suggest that since the pandemic, there has been a traceable shift from mirroring traditional assessment practices towards experimenting with more learner-centred, formative digital assessment methods (Kóris & Pál, 2021), especially by teachers who generally have more advanced knowledge of educational technologies (Fekete, 2020a).

To learn about the experiences of university students participating in Erasmus mobility programmes when universities suddenly transformed to online education, Kóris and colleagues (2021) interviewed 14 university students (four of whom were Hungarian students spending a semester in a different country, and four of whom were European students spending a semester in Hungary). The goal was to see what thought processes were behind either continuing their mobility and remaining in the foreign country or going home and transitioning to online mobility. In the former case, learners moved to the given foreign country and participated in online education from the host country, while in the latter case, learners participated in online education from their home countries. The results showed that those students who opted to remain in their host countries faced challenges and felt isolation but managed to overcome these initial hardships and felt a sense of accomplishment with the results of their semester’s work. However, they experienced adversities resulting from the lack of informal contact with fellow students and university staff as well as the deprivation of local cultural activities, both of which are among the main reasons for students opting for mobility in addition to academic gains (Kóris et al., 2021). Implications of the study target the organisation and facilitation of effective socialising and networking sessions for all digital mobility programmes (Kóris et al., 2021); however, local cultural programmes can hardly be offered by virtual exchange programmes. It can be concluded that many of the issues addressed by the participants of this study are also frequently emerging themes in the literature of virtual mobility, which had to be experienced by those who had initially wanted to participate in the physical mobility programme. Thus, most negative experiences voiced by the students were the results of the fact that all students who opted out from physical exchange transferred to virtual exchange, which stripped them from the possibility of realising the advantages of physical mobility.

Focusing on the perspectives of university instructors, Fekete and Divéki (2022) conducted an interview study on a series of self-organised professional development workshops initiated by the English Language Pedagogy Department of a Hungarian university at the beginning of the 2020 autumn semester. Even though teaching started face-to-face, a second Covid-lockdown had already been envisioned by government officials, which then became reality in November 2020. Ten department members participated in the workshop series that focused on the use of the university’s LMS system (Microsoft Teams), testing system (UniPoll) as well as some other major platforms requested to be part of the workshops by the department members (Zoom, One Note, Google Forms). The participants expressed that they benefited greatly from the workshops because they were context-specific, problem-centric and involved a few participants only, thus everyone could ask their questions (Fekete & Divéki, 2022).

Informants of the study also expressed that they managed to implement much of what they had learnt in the workshops and became more confident in using the platforms discussed in the workshops. However, many of them would have required even more practice even though added benefits of the workshop series voiced by the participants were building a sense of community between department members that less often happens under normal circumstances and sharing knowledge through common brainstorming (Fekete & Divéki, 2022). Thus, implications of the study concern the benefits of self-organising workshops for the very problems of certain departments or institutions because a supportive collegial atmosphere boosts morale and builds communities in challenging times (Fekete, 2020a; Fekete & Divéki, 2022). However, not only is it possible to organise professional development workshops in trying times, but their organisation is beneficial to ensure that department members, who often teach seminar groups of the same university course, get to know the problems of colleagues, or keep up with the more progressive practices of fellow instructors in a friendly and experimental manner. Throughout these instances, they can learn about, challenge and discuss instructional questions that could also result in strengthening the community of instructors.