In the Hungarian higher educational context, the skills and competences ought to be mastered by learners are detailed in the training and outcome requirements (KKK), out of which one specifically targets Teacher Education majors’ competences (Hungarian Official Gazette, 2013). According to this, all teacher education programmes should vest learners with sufficient digital skills appropriate to their chosen field of education. These include mastering the skill and need to stay updated in the digital fields linked to one’s subjects, knowing and using digital alternatives such as digital coursebooks, and – quite progressively – requires future teachers to be experienced in the digital alternatives of teaching their subjects (Hungarian Official Gazette, 2013). This signals that the KKK acknowledges the fact that digital technologies are expansions of teachers’ sets of skills and should be mastered simultaneously with more traditional, classroom-based teaching approaches. As opposed to the public educational sphere, the KKK regulating teacher educational programmes requires universities to establish and teach those digital competences that are context-sensitive, while their implementation rests with the universities (Hungarian Official Gazette, 2013). Furthermore, in Hungary, the law does not require university teachers in any field to hold any qualifications specific to digital technologies. It only states that 60% of instructors at universities, 45% of instructors in applied science universities, and 33% of college instructors should hold academic ranks (Hungarian Official Gazette, 2011). However, a completely new KKK on teacher education is about to be released and its regulations implemented in the forthcoming years, which might be more specific about these issues.

The Covid-19 pandemic unquestionably contributed to realising such digital aims, and many universities compiled digital teaching methodological booklets, established, or mandated their digital educational communities or centres to help their students and instructors face the challenges of online education (this is to be further detailed in section 2.7). But several universities within the field of humanities established digital educational or methodological centres well before the pandemic. Some of the reasons for these could be the need to welcome international students, to meet the demands of modern, digital workplaces as well as to offer competitive education in the modern digital age. Browsing through the websites of those higher educational institutions that offer teacher education programmes in the field of humanities, one can find many that refer to the presence of a digital methodological centre that offers informal and/or formal professional development possibilities for instructors and/or learners into digital technologies such as Eötvös Loránd University (https://tkk.elte.hu/category/digitalis-oktatas/); Eszterházy Károly Catholic University (https://uni-eszterhazy.hu/dti); Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary (https://btk.kre.hu/index.php/2015-12-05-09-31-20/kari-kutatocsoportok/796-ikt-kutato-es-tovabbkepzo-kozpont.html); Pannon University (https://dmi.mftk.uni-pannon.hu/); University of Debrecen (https://metk.unideb.hu/hu/bemutatkozas); University of Pécs (https://pte.hu/hu/dot).

However, less of what specific digital skills development takes place as part of current teacher education masters’ programmes can be established without conducting further empirical research involving interviews with stakeholders and instructors of institutions and applying document analysis of course syllabi. In many cases, document analysis of these programmes reveal some, but by far not everything, about courses that might include digital technologies. Some courses or teaching methodological courses might target digital skills training of university students without including it in their titles, and some courses might be instructed by different teachers all designing their own course syllabus, out of which some might include digital skills development, some might not. Nevertheless, there are some universities that offer compulsory or elective courses into the fields of ICT, such as: