Abstract:

Education at all levels has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in various ways. As part of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities in Croatia, like many countries worldwide, are confronted with the need to adapt to online teaching. Institutions and teacher educators had to create new learning environments for students and adapt to remote teaching. The qualitative research frames the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to examine how teacher educators described their teaching and their students’ learning during the pandemic. Fifteen semi-structured interviews with teacher educators were analysed. The results demonstrated that transitioning online in a context of crisis contorts normal perception and readiness. The results also indicate that the lack of direct interaction with students and reduced students’ motivation were among the most strongly affected factors by the participants own learning process. This “new normal” also brought unexpected benefits providing new partnerships between teachers and students. The findings raise questions about the value offered by university education which includes networking and social opportunities as well as educational content. To remain relevant, universities will need to reinvent their learning environments so that digitalisation expands and complements student-teacher and other relationships. The implications of this study for the development of online teaching and learning are also discussed.

Keywords:

COVID-19 pandemic, online learning, online readiness, online teaching, teacher educators.