As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, organizing, designing and delivering learning programs in higher educational institutions needed to be revised and transferred to the digital world without destroying the overall cohesion and balance of the educational ecosystem. We present a case study of transformation challenges of the institution during COVID-19 from the perspective of teaching staff. The results of a survey indicate, that the learning ecosystem was able to respond to the sudden external disturbances as it had the basic conditions fulfilled. However, the transformation represents rather a first-order change, being an online extension of previous everyday practices and not bringing forth deep changes in ways of learning and teaching. As a result, the institution’s management needs to invest in additional infrastructure as well as in educational technologists who would support the teaching staff to systematically widen their pedagogical repertoire and raise their digital competencies to the next level.

Keywords: COVID-19, digital transformation, learning ecosystem, higher education, ecosystem responsiveness