This article presents and discusses some of the paradoxes that educators in the higher education sector encountered during the COVID-19 lockdowns. It takes a fresh look at data from a study involving 3,000 teachers and 20,000 students as the empirical background in the form of both quantitative and qualitative material. Based on a paradoxical-theoretical perspective, the article looks at the experiences of educators who had to teach online - some of them for the first time. The article finds that the lockdowns led to teaching and learning situations in an online format which were paradoxically different from both familiar on-site and online teaching.