The COVID-19 pandemic forced rapid closures of educational institutions worldwide in 2020. Online delivery has become a common means of providing continuity of learning, particularly for tertiary institutions. It remains unclear what impact this experience of online teaching under emergency conditions will have on future online teaching. This paper explores this question through a case study of 25 tertiary teaching staff at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa New Zealand. Applying Bourdieu’s categories of doxic and heterodox habitus, the paper argues that, for many staff, the experience of learning to teach online during a pandemic destabilised a prior doxic professional habitus. For some staff, this destabilisation led to the construction of a more fluid, creative heterodox habitus open to innovative online teaching in the future. For others, the pre-pandemic doxic habitus instead spiralled into ongoing self-criticism and an associated collapse in professional confidence. Professional development initiatives seeking to build on the pandemic teaching experience need to be mindful of these contrasting experiences to increase the chances of improving online teaching practice in the longer term.