Nevertheless, several participants (Zsóka, Olga, Diána, Léna, Klára, Ágota and Iván) claimed that the first and second online teaching periods brought elemental changes to their teachers’ and their techno-pedagogical knowledge. Olga highlighted that a major advantage of technology was that education “had somewhere to move”, and it could somehow continue in the online sphere. Zsóka, Olga, Diána, Léna, Klára, Ágota and Iván said that in the first, spring 2020 Covid-wave, LMS systems were mainly used as storage websites where the materials could be made available for the learners, while in the autumn 2020 semester, participants registered many changes in their and in their teachers’ techno-pedagogical knowledge. Léna had her field practice in these two semesters, and she learned a lot from her mentor teacher, especially from her EFL mentor teacher. Iván learned about online quizzes such as Google Forms through his university instructors making them take online tests using this platform. In Ágota’s, Diána’s and Flóra’s institution, methodology seminars that involved uploading activity or lesson plans in the first Covid-wave, moved entirely online using LMS systems and Zoom or Microsoft Teams calls. Throughout these online classes, the students had to implement their microteaching sessions. During these sessions, the students were made hosts of the call and were required to deliver instructions appropriate to the online environment, carry out the tasks and take care of the meta environment of the teaching session such as creating online documents before the session and creating breakout rooms during the session. Ágota highlighted that she learnt a lot about the technicalities of Zoom and such issues as sharing her screen along with her computer audio (so that the video she played also had audio on her students’ computers), instructing learners about reactions in Zoom (e.g., how to raise their hand or clap virtually), and setting the breakout rooms to her liking (e.g., can students move between them freely or not, how long the countdown should be once the rooms are closed before students are moved back to the main session).

Flóra, whose mother is a primary school teacher, expressed that she perceived the experiences of younger students with online education to be more of a burden for both teachers and students. She perceived that her mother’s main ambition with online education was an endless struggle to find stimulating online activities “so that the children could survive” these trying times. While the participants generally noticed changes for the better in their instructors’ and their technological and techno-pedagogical knowledge, none of them expressed that the online education periods proved to be too much a psychological burden for them, but Iván and Flóra said that the long-term effects of these periods would only be revealed in the future.

 

The participants reported a relatively quick adaptation of their instructors to the new circumstances. In the second Covid-triggered remote teaching period, participants perceived that their instructors used technology better and they altered the content of their courses to meet the possibilities of online instruction – presumably a result of much collegial brainstorming and informal professional development (Fekete & Divéki, 2022). This adaptation signals that professional development is most effective if it targets a micro context, and that university instructors involved in teacher training programmes had very high pedagogical content knowledge that could be transferred into technological pedagogical knowledge. This relatively fast and continuous adaptation signals that if change is endorsed (in this case, unfortunately by a pandemic), it can take place rather swiftly because as it has previously been argued, technological domains are mere extensions of traditional teaching possibilities provided one’s general computer literacy skills are developed enough. Wherever department members and the universities supported this process (by organising helplines, development workshops, compiling methodological guidelines, providing IT help, ensuring access to LMS systems, etc.), it was carried out quickly, and the teaching and learning processes could live up to the standards of traditional instruction as perceived by the interview participants.