What is worth retaining from the COVID-19 experience on remote online education in the prospective teacher education?

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the educational landscape, including the training of prospective teachers. This study explores prospective teachers’ experiences of transitioning to online distance education (ODE) and their intentions regarding the preferred teaching scenarios they wish to use in their future in-service practice. In the sample of 281 prospective teachers, we found interesting results: (a) smartphones offer very limited opportunities for active participation in ODE; (b) connectivity is the weakest point in ODE; (c) personal digital infrastructure and study conditions influence intention to choose teaching scenarios in ODE, when in the role of teacher, while group size does not. We can safely assume that online distance education will survive in some educational pockets but due to numerous limitations, it will not become a dominant current in teacher education.


Introduction
The authorities' response to the new disease called COVID-19, caused by the SARS coronavirus Cov2, affects basically all sectors of society, and the education sector was no exception.In response to measures ranging from the quarantine of individuals and their relatives to the complete closure of educational institutions, the use of online remote transmission technologies was a plausible solution.However, these technologies and their application in education cannot only be seen as substitutes or complements to traditional pedagogy, but like any remedy, they also have side effects, as was already realized before the pandemic (e.g.Spitzer, 2014) and again approved during it (e.g.Dolenc et al., 2021a).The experiences and insights gained during the pandemic as a result of the basically overnight turn of "bricks and mortar" educational institutions into remote online-based ones, immediately opened a question of which of these solutions is worth to be retained even after the "normalization" of the situation in new reality (e.g., Du Plessis, 2022;Trust & Whalen, 2020;Vlachopoulos, 2022).
In prospective teacher education, students in these disciplines cannot be considered merely passive recipients of the teaching strategies used by their university teachers but should learn how to adapt them in the real-life scenarios of their future workplace.The generations affected by the pandemic measures have had the unique opportunity to test many aspects of online distance learning for themselves.As aspiring teacher educators, we can in a sense be considered metateachers, teaching teachers how to teach.As online distance education was also a new experience for us, we were interested in how we could bring the new experiences we had gained into future teacher education.As we know previous experiences can influence future decisions, the topic of the study is the possible influence of prospective teachers' experiences on the choice of teaching scenarios when they are alone in school, however, to adapt already overloaded university curricula changes must be made on evidence which include knowledge of perspectives of the prospective students, the topic of the present paper.
The teaching profession is very complex, and teaching can be described as a process consisting of many interconnected operations taking place in different spaces and involving many people using a variety of technologies, which can be a stressful experience (Gardner, 2010).Among the models that describe this complexity, we would like to highlight the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), which shows that a teacher should inherently combine content knowledge, pedagogy, and the use of technology in relation to context.Another model that aims to combine the tradition of subject didactics (Fachdidaktik) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is the Educational Reconstruction for Teacher Education (ERTE) model (Van Dijk & Kattmann, 2007).Both models, as well as the predecessor model PCK (Shulman, 1986(Shulman, , 1987)), do not consider prior experiences (Ploj Virtič et al., 2021) and affectivemotivational dimensions (Blömeke, 2017), which are important for coping with the complex demands of the teacher profession.
Considering an uncertain future, training prospective teachers is anything but an easy task and can only be considered the first part of a teacher's career, where the only constant is change.During a teacher's career, everything can change, from the content to be taught, the position of the content in the curriculum, the number of lessons, the socio-economic and demographic composition of the students, educational paradigms and technology, to name a few.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the education of prospective teachers was dynamic and challenging, but stable in all its diversity.Prospective teachers participated in carefully planned activities that took place in faculties and schools and aimed to prepare them not only to master subject content but also to work with students and apply different teaching methods using technology with the support of mentors (Ploj Virtič et al., 2021).
Then it happened that teacher training, as the entire educational process, was moved to the internet literally overnight.In practice, all stakeholders had to update and adapt their teaching/ learning strategies and learning environments.In most countries, classrooms were replaced by homes of teachers and their students, and communication between them was via the internet as a backbone.In the era of teacher education prior to COVID-19, prospective teachers rotated regularly among faculty, with much of the experience gained through activities such as microteaching (Fischetti et al., 2021;Ralph, 2014) led by instructors and internships led by mentors in schools.However, in the COVID era, teaching has shifted completely and uncompromisingly to the Internet, making many of the traditional methods temporarily obsolete and increasing some of the other, primarily online-based distance learning methods.Because of this crucial shift, distance education during a pandemic can be described as "emergency remote teaching" (Hodges et al., 2020) and "forced online distance education" (Dolenc et al., 2021a), with the most plausible prediction being that some of the experiences gained online will be blended with more traditional teaching methods even after the health reasons have expired.
The pandemic in Slovenia led to school closures, which have occurred in several waves of the epidemic so far.The first closure was from March to May 2020, when the closure took us completely by surprise and no one was prepared for it.The first closure was more about improvisation and finding the most pragmatic solutions, not necessarily the best.As a result, a cure that saved an academic year brought a number of side effects (Dolenc et al., 2021a).Some forms of the study process, such as mastering tools and instruments not available at home, making products in workshops or conducting experiments in the laboratory, could not be done because of their practical nature, so alternatives had to be found.The lesson learned was that teachers and students quickly mastered the technology, but the social interactions were a more difficult problem to solve (Kovacs et al., 2021).
After a slight improvement in the health situation in the summer of 2020, the second wave of the epidemic required school closures again between October 2020 and March 2021.In the authors' experience, and compared to the first closure, educators were better prepared for distance learning.The first school/university closure and transition to a forced model of online distance education have provided much research and useful guidance on sustaining and improving teaching in such a situation (e.g., Bao, 2020;Dolenc et al., 2021a;Flores & Gago, 2020;Hodges et al., 2020).Carrillo and Flores (2020, 478-479) summarised the findings and directions for further research after reviewing research on education during the pandemic.We have considered their main orientations in our research: (a) the need to "move beyond online emergency practices to provide an evidence-based approach to online teaching and learning that recognizes the unique characteristics of this pedagogy and its implications", (b) reduce or eliminate potential exclusions of individuals and inequalities by increasing the presence of participants in the learning process, (c) prepare future teachers for a new role and train them with new/different competencies they will need for distance education, and (d) go beyond "an instrumental approach to online teaching and learning to include its ethical, political and pedagogical dimensions in the equation." Using responses from 414 university students, Ploj Virtič et al. (2021) show that "satisfaction" is a key construct in explaining continuance intentions to use synchronous and asynchronous forms of online education in the future.Among the predictors of "satisfaction", only "attitude" is a strong predictor, while "organizational support", "perceived ease of use", and "learner attitudes towards online learning" are not.References (e.g., Sherman & MacDonald, 2007;Van Katwijk et al., 2021;Yüksel & Kavanoz, 2015) indicate that previous experiences of prospective teachers will shape future teaching practice.Because the unprecedented closure of the entire school system in 2020/ 21 presents a unique context that future educators have not previously faced, it is likely that the skills and insights gained during university education and in-school training during this period will significantly influence their forthcoming professional practices.Considering ICT the consequences of the experiences gained may also facilitate or hinder the introduction of digital forms of teaching (Gudmundsdottir & Hatlevik, 2018;Starkey, 2020) into regular primary and secondary education.
Before the launch of forced online distance education (FODE) during the COVID-19 pandemic in prospective teacher education, there were some optimistic views about online teaching.Among the most prominent were the ideas that "online education is possible anytime, anywhere" (e.g.Henrie et al., 2015) and that young people are "digital natives" and therefore able to use digital technologies (Prensky, 2009).As digital immigrants, according to Prensky, we need to test these assumptions in the largest unwanted educational experiment (Olofsson et al., 2021) and fill the knowledge, population, and practical research gaps in prospective teacher education.
Based on the results, we will be able to identify what content is worth keeping and what content is worth including in the curricula of future teacher education, even after the pandemic, to keep up with the beliefs of future teachers (Sadaf et al., 2012).
In addition, we plan to make changes to the existing curriculum to fill in the missing knowledge and skills that can be applied in the future teaching practice of prospective teachers.

Aims and scopes
Based on a review of the references available at the time of the study (Henrie et al., 2015;Prensky, 2009), we identified knowledge and practical research gaps, reflected in the title of this paper.The aim of the study was to investigate prospective teachers' experiences of enforced online distance education during the second lockdown of the university and their intentions to choose a particular teaching scenario when in the role of teacher.The results will serve as a background for improving a teacher preparation course in the years to come.All intentions of the study can be summarised in one research question:

RQ:
To what extent the various factors of online distance learning can influence a type of prospective teaching practice?
We began our study with a series of hypotheses related to students' intentions to choose a particular teaching scenario when in the role of teacher.It was hypothesized that their intentions would be influenced by the following factors: (1) the device that students mainly use in online learning (H1); (2) the type of connections students use to participate in video conferencing (H2); (3) the personal digital infrastructure used for the online study (H3); (4) the conditions of online study (H4); (5) the size of the group in which students mainly participate online (H5); (6) the university's support for online study (H6).
The list of factors was compiled based on the authors' experience of delivering online courses in university and the results of their previous research on the general student population (Dolenc et al., 2021a;Ploj Virtič et al., 2021) and published studies prior to the January of 2021 when the data collecting started.

Methodology
Following the aims and scope of the study and the preliminary hypotheses, we began to build a theoretical framework.
To better organise the instruments used for data collection and to allow for appropriate statistical follow-up analyses, the variables were divided into different organisational categories -scales.All hypothetical organisational categories and their relationships are explained later in the text.To enable reproducibility, all primary files (questionnaires and data files) are permanently accessible on the Zenodo platform (zenodo.org).

Description of the scales
The multi-item scales based on theoretical organizational categories (concepts) (Ploj Virtič et al., 2021) were part of a larger survey to explore the study conditions of students, and prospective teachers when they study online during their second stay at home due to the university's closure.The scales are based on the author's first-hand experiences as teachers during the first university closure (Dolenc et al., 2021a;Ploj Virtič et al., 2021).

Teaching scenarios intention scale (TSIs)
The purpose of the scale was to determine the prospective teachers' intention to choose a particular teaching scenario of online distance education when they will be in the role of teacher.The prospective teachers were presented with five teaching scenarios and asked to indicate the extent to which each scenario applied to them on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
The five teaching scenarios were as follows: • Scenario 1 (TS1): All lessons would be held by video conference as scheduled.
• Scenario 2 (TS2): I would give all materials and assignments to the students in the online classroom (without video conferencing at all).
• Scenario 3 (TS3): Instruction would be given in combination following next steps through one week: ○ I would deliver instruction and assignments to the students in the online classroom and give them assignments.
○ Students would complete the assignments and learn independently.
○ Once a week I would meet with all the students in a video conference and give them feedback.
• Scenario 4 (TS4): Instruction would be given in combination following next steps through one week: ○ I would deliver instruction and assignments to the students in the online classroom and give them assignments.
○ Students would complete the assignments and learn independently.
○ Once a week I would meet with an individual student in a video conference and give them feedback.
• Scenario 5 (TS5): Each school lesson via video conferencing would be a combination of: ○ In the first part of the lesson, I would give the material and instructions for the learning activity.
○ For the next 25 minutes, students would work independently on the learning activity according to the instructions.
○ At the end of the lesson, there would be a joint discussion and review of the set task via video conferencing.
The five items of the TSIs can be considered as outcome variables if the direction of the correlation (regression) analyses is known.
Learning scenarios TS1, TS2, and TS5 are designed for a single lesson, while learning scenarios TS3 and TS4 are not limited to a single lesson, but rather to the distribution of learning activities within a week.The difference between learning scenarios TS3 and TS4 lies in their final phase: TS3 includes a once-weekly video meeting of the teacher with the entire group of students, while TS4 includes a once-weekly video meeting of the teacher with an individual student.Therefore, the key distinction between TS3 and TS4 scenarios is the individualized approach to student engagement.
The next four scales depend mainly on the material conditions of the students at their place of residence.Due to legal restrictions, the study was moved online without asking whether the new study conditions were suitable for such work or not.We asked about the device they used to follow the program (DEVs), connectivity to online environments (CONs), personal digital infrastructure (PDIs), and study conditions (SCs) at their predominant place of work during the pandemic.This is followed by the Group Size Scale (GSs) for participation in online activities and University Support Scale (USs) for online study.Both scales have in common that students cannot influence them, at least not to a large extent.

Devices used when participating in different forms of online study scale (DEVs)
Different forms of instruction require different student activities.Therefore, it is important that students use devices that allow them not only to passively receive information but to actively engage in any activity where active participation is expected.The DEV scale consists of four items and was used to investigate what devices students use when participating in various forms of online study (lectures, seminars, lab work, and individual assignments).There were four response options: (f1) always using a phone/tablet, (f2) using a phone/tablet more often than a computer, (f3) using a computer more often than a phone/tablet, and (f4) always using a computer.All items are listed in Table 2.

Type of connections students use to participate in the videoconference scale (CONs)
Stable and fast connections to the internet are especially crucial for synchronous online forms of distance learning.During the lockdown, it became apparent in many cases that connectivity, rather than device ownership and quality, was a key reason for absence.While access to the university's digital environments was provided free of charge via Wi-Fi for all students in the university buildings, this was not the case for them at home.We asked students about the connections they use to connect to the video conferencing systems via a mobile device and a stationary computer, and offered them the following five response options: (f1) Mobile only (3 G, 4 G, LTE), (f2) More mobile than fixed, (f3) More fixed than mobile, (f4) Fixed only (LAN, WIFI) and (f5) Does not apply to me (I do not have this device), see Table 3.

Personal digital infrastructure scale (PDIs)
The scale is used to measure the participants' opinion of the quality of the home technology used for online communication and their ability to complete the tasks set by the educators.The reason for including the scale was that the personal digital technology used in online interaction between educators and students and the students' ability to fulfill their obligation to complete a course is not neutral (Clegg et al., 2003;Zhao et al., 2004).In addition, problems with technology were among the most frequently reported problems, both by students and their educators, directed at students and very severe (Dolenc et al., 2021a).The scale consists of five items and was used to explore students' opinions about the adequacy of personal/digital infrastructure for online study.Items listed were personal computers, mobile phones, workplaces, mobile connections, and stationary connections.The instruction to students was, "On a six-point scale, select how appropriate your infrastructure and equipment are for distance learning."The response format was a scale: (f1) inadequate, (f2) just adequate, (f3) suitable, (f4) good, (f5) excellent and (f6) does not apply to me, I do not have this equipment.All items are listed in Table 4.

Study conditions scale (SCs)
The scale consists of seven items and was used to explore study conditions for online study, such as "I have my own computer that I do not share with others."It was assumed that the conditions for online study, such as having one's own smartphone, tablet, computer with a working webcam and microphone, and one's own quiet room, etc., are important factors for future decisions.All statements are listed in Table 5. Respondents were asked to answer on a two-point scale: yes/no.

University support scale in the online study (USs)
The scale is intended as a measure of the support students receive from their university.This instrument consists of six items such as "The university/faculty offered me the opportunity to borrow a webcam, microphone or accessories."For the purposes of the study, the existing construct "management support" (Ploj Virtič et al., 2021) was restructured.We retained the statement on technological support and added items on financial and informational support.All statements are listed in Table 7. Respondents were asked to answer on a two-point scale: yes/no.

Sampling procedure and sample
An online questionnaire was created using the open-source web survey application 1 Ka (www.1ka.si).The link was announced to students of three faculties of one university in January 2021 through various access channels, such as social networks and faculty mailing lists.At least potentially every student had a chance to respond, therefore the sampling strategy can be regarded as purposive and targeted to a specific population, students-future (prospective) teachers of various subjects at secondary and general primary education of three faculties of one university.Due to the intentions of the study students in higher classes were addressed.In Slovenia to complete prospective teacher studies five years are obligatory combining bachelor and master study.Obligation of all students is visiting schools and first hand teaching practice, which were also transferred on-line during the closure.After two weeks, the data collection was completed.The instrument was anonymous, and responses were taken as consent.According to the general opinion of the Slovenian data protection office such educational studies where no identifiable personal data are collected do not need additional approvements of institutional ethical boards.
The sample consisted of 281 prospective teachers from three faculties providing prospective teacher master education programmes (Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Maribor, Slovenia).In the sample, 249 (88.6%) are women, 30 (10.7%) are men and 2 (0.7%) reported being others, reflecting the feminization of the teaching profession.As far as job prospects are concerned, they all refer mainly to lower secondary education.

Statistical analyses
After completing data collection, all data variables were checked for missing data.Because of the intended analyses and because we wanted to save all available data for use in the descriptive analyses, respondents' records with missing data were not deleted listwise or replaced with replacement values (Newman, 2014).However, listwise deletion of respondent-provided records was considered a plausible option for correlational analyses based on case-by-case calculations.
Due to the ordinal or even binary format of some variables, non-parametric tests were a plausible option, as were correlation analyses using Spearman's rho (Erceg-Hurn & Mirosevich, 2008).
Due to the width of the content of the items in each organizational category, unidimensionality or high reliability calculated as Cronbach's alphas for multiple responses or Kuder-Richardson formula 20 for dichotomous responses, were not to be expected (Vaske et al., 2017), so we performed calculations (correlations) using individual items rather than the whole organizational category treated as a construct.
In the paper, we only reported results that were statistically significant.All other calculations as well as the raw data are available in the Zenodo data repository (zenodo.org).
All calculations were carried out using the statistical package IBM SPSS 28.

Results
The results are presented in two parts: (1) descriptive statistics for each scale measured in the study (organizational concept) and (2) influences of the items of each organizational concept calculated as non-parametric correlations with the intention of selecting teaching scenarios in distance teaching when working as a teacher.

Teaching scenarios scale (TSs)
The results of the teaching scenarios that the prospective teachers intended to choose in the role of the teacher in distance education (based on their experiences as educators, during the first closure of the university) are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that the most frequently chosen TS involves a synchronous form of teaching with the active participation of the teacher and the students.At the bottom of the range is a scenario without any video conferencing.The results of the TS preferences (intentions) were used in all correlation analyses and can be understood as outcome variables.

Devices used when participating in different forms of online study scale (DEVs)
The results of the question on which devices students used most frequently (DEVs) in the different forms of online study are shown in Table 2.For each form of study, there were four choices: (1) always using a phone/tablet, (2) using a phone/tablet more often than a computer, (3) using a computer more often than a phone/tablet, and (4) always using a computer.
It is clear that phones/tablets are not primary devices and can be seen as a makeshift rather than a device that can be used seriously, especially if activities beyond googling or passively following learning materials are expected.

Type of connections students use to participate in videoconference scale (CONs)
From the results presented in Table 3, it can be seen that students mainly use stationary connections with computers and mobile networks with smartphones.The use of the mobile network with computers has increased the role of smartphones as secondary devices.Students are most likely to use smartphones with mobile networks as hotspots when the stationary connection is of poor quality or non-existent.

Personal digital infrastructure scale (PDIs)
Participants were asked for their opinion on the suitability of the infrastructure and equipment (Home Technology) used for online communication and the ability to complete the tasks set by the educators (Table 4).For each infrastructure or equipment, students had to choose on a 5-point scale from insufficient to excellent, with (3) suitable in the middle of the scale.Students could also choose (6) does not apply to me (I do not have this infrastructure or equipment).Note.(f1) always using a phone/tablet, (f2) more often using a phone/tablet than a computer, (f3) more often using a computer than a phone/tablet, and (f4) always using a computer.The results in Table 4 show that most students rate the suitability of personal digital technology (PC, mobile phone) as good or excellent, but there is a small silent minority (5%) who have inadequate or barely adequate equipment.Similar results emerge for the suitability of the working place, mobile connection and stationary connection at home.From the results of internet connection suitability, only 61.1% of students have a good or excellent mobile connection and 51.6% of students have a stationary connection.An insufficient and barely sufficient mobile connection has 10% of the students and stationary connection has 16.7% of the students.From the results we can see that the biggest problem is connectivity.

Study conditions scale (SCs)
The results of the study conditions for online study are shown in Table 5. Prospective teachers were asked to answer yes/no to a given statement.
From the results presented in Table 5, it is clear that the majority of prospective teachers have normal study conditions.The majority have their own working computer, smartphone, and a place to study, but there is also a minority where the conditions are not sufficient for normal online study.The fact that some prospective teachers have to share equipment and do not have the necessary infrastructure for distance learning is alarming.

The group size scale (GSs)
The results of the group sizes (GSs) during attendance of lectures, seminars, and laboratory work are shown in Table 6.From the results shown in Table 6, it can be seen that the group sizes differ for the different types of instructions.What is not shown is the finding from the description of the sample that the largest groups are mainly prospective primary teachers, for whom the interest in participating is quite high, but that a considerable number of prospective subject teachers have not had such an experience because the number of students participating in such programs is in some cases less than ten (Dolenc et al., 2021b).

University Support Scale in the online study (USs)
The results of university support during the online study that students receive from their university are shown in Table 7. Prospective teachers were asked to answer yes/no to a given statement.
From the results presented in Table 7, it is evident that the university/faculty have provided codes of conduct for online learning environments to half of the respondents.Only 32.9% of the respondents reported that they were informed about the recommendations for safe use of computers and 19.4% reported that they were informed about the recommendations for appropriate organization of the workplace at home (desk, lighting, ventilation).The respondents also reported that they did not have the opportunity to rent a computer or borrow a webcam, phone, or accessories.The university or faculties did not offer financial support for the increased costs of distance learning.

Influences of items of organizational structures on the intention to select teaching scenarios in distance teaching when in the role of in-service teacher
It was hypothesized that prospective teachers' intentions to choose one of the five teaching scenarios would be influenced by various factors.Due to the diversity of the data sets, the results are reported as Spearman's rho.

Influence of the device students mainly use in online learning (H 1 )
The type of device has no statistically significant influence on the choice of TS.All correlations (values not shown) are in a range between .1 and −.1.

Influence of the connections students use to participate in the video conferencing scale (CONs) (H 2 )
The type of connection has no statistically significant influence on the choice of TS.All correlations (values not shown) are in a range between .1 and −.1.

Influence of personal digital infrastructure on the online study (H 3 )
The results of the influence of personal digital infrastructure for online study on the choice of TS are shown in Table 8.
Table 8 shows that the quality of all forms of PDI correlates with the intention to use TS5 (blended synchronous teaching) and the quality of a mobile device in addition to synchronous teaching.All other correlations are not significant.

Influence of the conditions of online study (H 4 )
The results of the influence of the conditions of online study on the choice of TS can be found in Table 9.
Table 9 shows that in most cases the home study conditions do not predict the planned teaching scenarios in a statistically significant way.Be that as it may, it can be concluded that at least a retrievable PC with a good internet connection is a minimum.At the moment, it is impossible to predict the exact role of online technologies in the future of education.It is very unlikely, but not impossible, that schools and whole societies will close again for some time and move all education online.After the experience of the lockdown, where it was brutally demonstrated that the role of the school is not only on a cognitive-rational level, but that it also serves as an institution where social skills are acquired.Therefore, schools are unlikely to be moved online, not only because many practical and craft skills can only be acquired through the hands-on experiences of students.The finding of many negative effects of online distance education on health and mental health (e.g., Chaturvedi et al., 2021;Schwartz et al., 2021) argue against the widespread use of online education in regular primary and secondary schools.However, it has also been shown that online education has some merits, especially when course participants are dispersed.Accordingly, it seems that a blend of traditional methods and online teaching will be the most plausible pedagogical future.For this reason, and consequently, training curricula need to be expanded, because online teaching will not replace traditional teaching strategies, which need to be mastered alongside digital strategies.
When considering synchronous forms of distance learning using video conferencing systems, the preferences for five teaching scenarios (Table 1) show that the preferred teaching scenario of prospective teachers in the long term (e.g. one school year) would be a combination of traditional and online forms.In such forms, synchronous and asynchronous parts are combined and the work is divided between teachers and students.The teacher's role is to provide explanations, instructions, and feedback, while the students' work is not only passive but should also take an active role.From a pedagogical point of view, prospective teachers prefer scenarios where students play an active role in acquiring knowledge (TS5) and reject scenarios where only tasks are set online without visual contact with students (TS2).
For the education of prospective teachers, this can only mean that one or more courses designed to provide them with technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) should be added to the already crowded curricula.In addition, the research community should explore the results of the largest "natural education experiment" in the history of education (Tomasik et al., 2021), which revealed that younger generations are more affected than older ones and that individual differences have become even greater.Based on these findings, strategies and methods should be developed and taught to the prospective teachers.Such training should not only inform about the use but also include how to work with the equipment and how students should work outside the emergency zone.
The hypothesis that the type of device (H 1 ) has a statistically significant impact on the choice of TS was rejected.Research has suggested the well-known fact that mobile devices allow students more flexibility to study online (Cross et al., 2016;Koole et al., 2010;Traxler, 2010).However, when looking at smartphones, it has become clear that their usability for online teaching is very limited.The results presented in Table 2 show that computers, both stationary and mobile, are primarily used for participating in video conferences and almost exclusively for preparing homework (assignments, presentations, etc.).The use of mobile devices is a great advantage in some situations, but in the case of forced online distance learning, where it was not possible to combine face-to-face work, it is a great disadvantage.Therefore, smartphones can only be considered as secondary devices.So, the argument that smartphones can replace computers for schoolwork is not valid.The functionality of smartphones both for synchronous lectures and for streaming recorded videos is limited to a fleeting presence or a quick search.It can be concluded that smartphones are not sufficient for active participation, let alone the use of a keyboard.Therefore, to take full advantage of online teaching, it seems that a portable or stationary computer with a working camera and microphone is the minimum that each of the participants in the educational process should possess.
The same is true for connectivity (H2), where a fast connection without data limitations in quantity is a minimum for the introduction of online education based on video conferencing systems.Connectivity has been found to be the weakest point in online distance education in a number of studies.Therefore, the results of studies simulating online conditions at educational institutions with fast connections should be taken with caution.
The result of the study was that the personal digital infrastructure for the online study was excellent for some and below acceptable for others.While the majority of students had good enough working conditions, the problem for the unprivileged can be severe.Considering prospective teachers will be teaching in a digitally driven world where students expect nothing less than above average digital literacy and semi-professional multimedia production and assembly from teachers, we cannot be satisfied to find that at least a quarter of future educators does not have adequate computers (Table 4).To be able to teach professionally online from home, good internet connections are a must, which is not the case for about 40% of the students.From the results on equipment and connections related to workspace, we can conclude that a significant number of students will not be able to complete a school year in a legitimate way.
The hypothesis (H 3 ) that personal digital infrastructure and the hypothesis (H 4 ) that study conditions influence intention to choose teaching scenarios in distance teaching when in the role of the teacher were confirmed, at least for some of the teaching scenarios.The results of the study empirically confirmed what was already known and neglected by many.For example, and according to Andersson and Kroisandt's (2021) study, students have different study conditions for basic online study.They report large differences in the availability of a quiet place to study, access to digital devices, and quality of internet connection.The study was conducted on a small sample, so we felt this construct was very important to include in this study.In addition, Fialho et al. (2021) found an important relationship between poor learning conditions and increased depression in students.From this, we can infer that schools compensate for at least some differences in students' economic status.We can speculate that prospective teachers have transferred their experiences as participants in online classes to their future work.However, in the event of a new closure or a desire to transfer parts of the curriculum online, each student should be guaranteed their own computer with fast connections and a quiet place to work.Until this standard is achieved, online education will only deepen the gap between those who have and those who have not.
Hypothesis H 5 , that the size of the group in which students primarily participate online influences their intention to select teaching scenarios in distance teaching when they are in the role of teacher, was rejected.The possible bias may be due to the fact that degree programs are not attractive enough for prospective teachers to enroll a large number of students (Dolenc et al., 2021b).Therefore, most activities are conducted in small groups, where students predominantly participate in the various forms of online study (lectures, seminars, and laboratory work).Previous research has not confirmed a significant difference in performance according to the type of group (Griffith, 2011), however, group size has been shown to significantly improve interaction in the case of smaller groups (Dawley, 2007).The finding of the study, as well as the authors' personal experiences, was that university support for the online study was essentially limited to the provision of free internet space and programs (MS Teams, Moodle, digital identity, email, access to digital libraries and the like) for all university staff.However, there was no organized support, apart from rather anecdotal help for some students.Therefore, the finding that such support had no influence on the intention to choose teaching scenarios in distance teaching when they will be in the role of the teacher (H 6 ) was not a surprise.

The limitations
Gender can be an important factor, but due to the strong feminization of the teaching profession in Slovenia, only about 10 percent of the sample was male.Therefore, due to the small sample, we could not perform an intended statistical analysis.

Conclusions
Based on the results, and in a time of rapid change triggered by the pandemic, no one (with the exception of a handful of online-based faculties) was fully prepared for the new way of teaching.To be honest, all the options for distance education in traditional and online environments existed before the pandemic broke out, and there was a plethora of research examining distance education from different angles.But the problem with all this research was that it did not necessarily reflect the situation in the COVID-19 pandemic.It was realized that assumptions such as ´online education is possible anytime, anywhere´ (Henrie et al., 2015), and ´digital nativeness´ (Prensky, 2009) of the students are rather myths.From the results of our research, we can safely say that online distance education will survive in some educational pockets but it will not become the dominant current in education.From the perspective of the youngest generations of prospective teachers, we can say that they have painstakingly acquired many aspects of online study.From the perspective of teacher education, it became clear how the didactics of online study can be integrated into the already existing curricula.

Implications and future directions
From the results of the study, several implications are foreseen.The first and most important is a message to all stakeholders that technology is by no means neutral and cannot be taken as invisible but as part of the well-being of the students.Teacher educators should and must include in their curricula simulations of pedagogy applicable in online remote education preparing prospective teachers in a way as manoeuvres are applied in military forces.It can be reasonably expected that based on the devastating outcomes of the lockdowns to entire societies equal measures will not be repeated; however, closures of individual institutions or regions can be reasonably expected.Another point that should be mentioned as well, is that all possible evidence about education during the "dark ages" to reevaluate too optimistic views of the replacement of traditional teaching methods in the first phase with blended methods and in the final consequence with pure online educational forms.
For the research community, we propose further research to see if the results of our research can be transferred to their local environment to close the gap in the population by using the tools we tested.

Table 3 . Type of connections students use to participate in video conference Used connection
Note. (f1) Mobile only (3 G, 4 G, LTE), (f2) More mobile than landline, (f3) More landline than mobile, (f4) Landline only (LAN, WIFI), and (f5) Not applicable to me (I don't have this device)