Blended Learning Practices in Russian Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, Perspectives

Marina Nikiforova,M Vidrevich

doi:10.1051/shsconf/20219901005

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and a forced lockdown in spring 2020 made us reconsider the way we deliver higher education. Today we are all adopting new teaching tools and methods and redesigning our materials to be meant for diverse educational contexts. The present paper deals with the phenomenon of blended learning, which is a relatively new approach in Russian higher education. We introduce and critically discuss the concept of blended learning and given our own experience and the data of the survey we have conducted we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of blended learning approach and assess the prospects of its implementation in Russian higher education.

Highlights

A forced shift to remote learning at all levels of education in Russia in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic is called by some educators a natural pedagogical experiment
The new academic year (2020-2021) for many higher education institutions in Russia began with another measure, which general idea was to combine in-person learning with remote learning in order to minimize the number of physical contacts inside the university but to still preserve some face-to-face interaction between students and teaching staff
According to the Guidance developed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in June 2020, the term ‘blended learning’ can be applied “in several different ways to describe different models of delivery and/or student engagement” [10]

Summary

Introduction

A forced shift to remote learning (synchronous and asynchronous) at all levels of education in Russia in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic is called by some educators a natural pedagogical experiment. The new academic year (2020-2021) for many higher education institutions in Russia began with another measure, which general idea was to combine in-person learning with remote (mainly online) learning in order to minimize the number of physical contacts inside the university but to still preserve some face-to-face interaction between students and teaching staff. Most educators call this mode of education delivery ‘blended learning’[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8], though there are some who prefer the term ‘hybrid learning’ [9]. Though this time all the stakeholders were far better prepared to new learning scenarios, it was again a challenge to face since blended learning in Russian higher education was an innovation that lacked both theoretical and practical background

Methods

Results

Conclusion