Problems of Teaching Foreign Students under Conditions of the Pandemic

Abstract

The article analyzes a process of teaching foreign students at regional universities under conditions of restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, using digital technologies. Currently, universities, and especially technical universities, play a leading role in the development and distribution of digital technologies. The authors believe that achieving these goals involves changing the content of academic disciplines and courses, including those aimed at improving digital literacy. The concept of combining a lecture system and e-learning technologies, which are provided by the electronic platform Microsoft Teams at the VSTU, is a modern format of the educational process. With a mixed format of educational process, the modular principle of organizing a curriculum of disciplines seems to be more appropriate. The authors analyze the results of the first stage of educational digitalization (the second semester of the 2019/20 academic year). This analysis is based on the academic performance of students (Russian and foreign) and the results of teachers’ and students’ survey on the effectiveness of distance learning. According to the results of educational analytics, the authors state, firstly, a decrease in the absolute academic performance of students while teaching with a help of the distance education technologies and e-learning, due to the low level of students’ self-organization and the lack of educational material in the digital format; secondly, a decrease in the quality of teaching, which demonstrates the unwillingness of teachers to use the potential of e-learning and, thirdly, the impossibility of a complete transfer of teaching to a digital environment. In addition, the authors describe the problems faced by regional universities in the process of educational digitalization and the implementation of the program of Russian education export.