Distance education through the eyes of teachers and students: key issues

Abstract

The article analyses the experience of Russian education digitalisation in the context of restricting the social contacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of a survey of teachers and students of the State University of Management on the quality of education during the pandemic and the difficulties that the participants of the educational process overcame in connection with the emergency transition to the online format are presented. The problems of psychological, pedagogical, didactic, socio-psychological and technical nature that the participants of the educational process encountered when organising online learning activities have been identified by the methods of expert analysis. As a result of the analysis of respondents’ opinions and their comparison with the opinions of education researchers, a generalisation was made: despite the fact that e-education has firmly entered our lives, in the near future, at the bachelor’s level, the online learning format will not be able to replace the traditional format, since it does not provide a high quality of knowledge transfer and assimilation. At the same time, it is emphasized that the indisputable advantages of learning using electronic educational environments should not be overlooked, which aims to develop the principles and technologies of a “hybrid” bachelor’s education system, providing for a combination of online and offline formats in accordance with the requests and specific conditions of educational activities, depending on the orientation and profile of training.

Keywords

• digital transformation of education
• bachelor course
• digital education environment
• student interviews
• surveys of university teachers
• risks of digitalization