Narbut, N.P., Aleshkovski, I.A., Gasparishvili, A.T., Krukhmaleva, O.V., Savina, N.E. Russian students about learning under the COVID-19 pandemic: Resources, opportunities and assessment of the distance learning. RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2021, 21 (2), 211–224.

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: http://journals.rudn.ru/sociology/article/view/26812/19514 (дата обращения 31.08.2021)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the whole world confront with specific challenges that required taking urgent decisions on how to organize the functioning of various social institutions in a new reality. This has fully affected such institution as education. To prevent the spread of infection, the education systems in various countries all over the world were compelled, starting from March 2020, to adapt their activities to the imposed quarantine measures and switch to remote teaching/learning. This has, in varying degrees, affected all levels of education, from preschool to higher and postgraduate. However, the problems to be promptly solved at each level of education differ significantly. This paper provides a comparative assessment of the activities of Russia’s tertiary educational institutions by students during a pandemic at the stage of mandatory distance learning in the spring of 2020 and a planned switch to working from home in the autumn of 2020. The analysis was based on a study of the opinions of Russia’s tertiary students implemented in June 2020 (N = 31423) and in February 2021 (N = 32358). The study assumed that negative reactions to remote work and rejection of such a setting expressed by the bulk of the participants in the educational process in spring became smoother and not so acute by the autumn of 2020. The results of the two stages of the study show that Russian tertiary educational institutions have gone through a significant stage of digital transformation over the past year, which affected both the resources for organizing the educational process and the competence of the teaching staff. The work experience gained in the difficult and unpredictable conditions of the pandemic has made it possible to change public opinion from a sharply negative perception of distance learning to understanding and accepting its positive and productive forms for the education system and participants in the educational process. Introduction of digital technologies and the related resources is an objective and inevitable process of today’s development of the educational sphere and the country as a whole.