24.03.2020
Professor Alan Abaev, Dean of the Faculty of Advertising and PR, talks about the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning.
- How great is the demand for online education in Russia?
- Interest in distance learning arose at the beginning of the 21st century, and has been growing steadily ever since. It must be admitted that even if there were no coronavirus, online classes would still develop and gradually take over the classic forms of education.
In 2018, I was called as an expert of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia for the project “Modern Digital Educational Environment”. The project involves the creation of an aggregator that will unite all Russian platforms that provide online course services, and there are a lot of them. And this is an extremely revealing trend.
- Is it possible to completely replace traditional education with distance learning?
- From my point of view as a teacher, it is not. Once I spoke at an international conference on this issue, and a colleague from the US told me: “You know, in Russia you have a very paternalistic approach to students.” This means that we take the student by hand in the first year and walk him through all the steps until he graduates. America’s approach is a lot more at arm’s length. The teacher assigns a task, and if the student did not meet the deadline and asks for an extension, the answer is: “These are not my problems, deal with your Dean’s office. I gave you an F. "
And still, the first American university which tried to completely transfer the educational process online, the University of St. Louis, lasted exactly one semester. In the second semester, the students cried out: “We can’t study when the teacher doesn’t remind us about the deadline.” So the self-discipline of young people is not sufficient enough for the university education to be delivered fully online.
- And what is the difficult part for the teacher?
- Changing to a different mode of operation. Among the teachers there are people of the older generation who find it difficult to adapt to new technologies. All their life they have read lectures, but here you have to figure out how to download and configure the application, and then how to work with it. An additional psychological burden arises from the fact that the transition to distance learning is a temporary measure. People think: “We need to put in some work for two weeks, and then everything will be as it was, why should we be bothered to learn what we won’t need?”
In addition, the older generation of teachers is used to being in contact with the students. I discussed this with colleagues, and they agree that working online is difficult, even if avatars or faces of students are present on screen. We conducted a survey and interviewed several thousand students, faculty and staff members. And they all say that there is simply nothing to replace live communication with at the moment. Videoconferencing still lacks a full-fledged opportunity to discuss the material covered. What teachers call “live voice communication” is very important. And no matter how much you explain in a pre-recorded lecture or at a webinar, the listeners will always have points they need to be explained further.
- Do you have to control students in online classes?
- Students are sly: they may connected to a video conference, but they do not turn on the video and get busy doing their things. So, when I conduct seminars at Zoom, every five minutes I’ll say: "Please, write if you heard the last question or not." And I specifically ask (especially those with a camera or microphone off): "Ivanov, you answer the question." In the audience, the lazy students usually sit in the back and play on the phone, but here I can clearly see who is doing what. And moreover - the attendance of online classes is much higher.
– So the future lies in distance education?
- Ideally, when the teacher lays the groundwork, he’d want to meet with students IRL, and the details can be worked out remotely and this is in some ways even better, because the coverage is greater. For example, online seminars work perfectly, as opposed to lectures. But you will have to make change in your habits. For me, a lecture is a show; I have never read two identical lectures. And now I realized that I needed to do a presentation. It is difficult, but I manage, yet the classes get more standardized.
So there are pros and cons. I don’t believe that online classes will crowd out the regular ones, because high-quality education is impossible without the offline element, but a combination of both would be very useful.
