How is the educational process going on at RSUH?
I think the students are happy. You can do it at a convenient time, in a convenient place, drinking tea from your favorite mug and lounging in your pajamas. We can even introduce our pets to each other!
Dr. Irina Azernikova, Associate Professor, Department of Public Relations, Tourism and Hospitality, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of History, Political Science and Law.
I was lucky, I had managed to finish the lecture block exactly a week before the quarantine and now I only have classes with small groups. Therefore, from the very first day I went straight to Zoom! We also organized chat rooms on VKontakte: there I give the homework, answer questions, post links to Zoom. Honestly, the process is glitch-free.
Still, my overall point of view is conservative: face-to-face classes are better. Fortunately, now I am working with those groups that I know well, but I still have little idea to how to reach out to the unknown students online.
Remote learning is a but forced way of communication during the quarantine. Only a well-developed online course may have some advantages..
Dr. Igor Isaev, Director of the Institute of Linguistics
I have previously recorded open lectures at various venues. These were full-fledged lectures with an audience and a camera, and I had to work, with a camera on, sitting in an armchair. I have also had a relatively large experience with the television and radio formats. All this helps a lot.
I use Zoom and Google Classroom, Google Hangouts and VKontakte. I have no trouble working with the remote format, since all my materials have been stored online, and the syllabi that I sent out at the beginning of the school year contain all the necessary information, including, among other things, links to multimedia sources.
At the online meeting with the students of the Institute of Linguistics, I asked if there were any difficulties. Three issues were identified:
It’s hard to say which is better: face-to-face classes or the online format. I enjoy personal communication more. But I do not experience difficulties if I have to go online. But here you need to understand that distance education is not just an e-mail or Zoom-based connection, but a system implying a complex interaction between the students and the teacher via a special interface. All this requires not only special training on the part of the teacher, but also methodological support for students.
In fact, the challenges of isolation presented us with at least one advantage: the world info-borders have disappeared.
Dr. Evgenia Dolgova, Associate Professor of the Knorozov Center
I have had distance learning experience working at the Instituto de Estudios Interdisciplinarios Rafael Ayau, IEIRA in Guatemala.
My training courses, available online, teach theory and methodology of history, general history, Russian history.
By the way, IEIRA's connections with RSUH are much closer than it might seem: it is on the basis of the Rafael Ayahu Institute of Interdisciplinary Research that a branch of RSUH will be opened in the Republic of Guatemala.
IEIRA has been operating since 2015. Now the development of the Institute is stimulated by this unexpected isolation mode.
The IEIRA’s educational model itself is very interesting. Its learning form is represented by online courses in electronic textbook format - eLibros. Tutorials are available for free download on iTunes.
Currently 641 students are enrolled at IEIRA, 111 study guides are available on iTunes, which have so far been downloaded 90643 times! The students come from other countries in Latin America, the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia.
