COVID-19 pandemic in Russia: medical and social problems of the digital educational environment

Abstract

In connection with the epidemic of a novel coronavirus infection, all schools in the Russian Federation in the spring of 2020 were forced to switch to remote work.Aim. To analyze key publications on: the organization of the educational process in the context of distance learning; life and well-being of participants in the educational process in conditions of lockdown; medical and social approaches to reduce the negative consequences of lockdown for children and adolescents during distance learning. Materials and methods. The analysis of domestic and international scientific publications and recommendations found using the search engines Scopus, Pubmed, the Russian Science Citation Index and by manual search on the resources of WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO and CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).Results. The closure of educational institutions is a risk of reducing the quality of education. In 2020, with the closure of Russian schools, the educational process was not stopped due to distance learning using digital technologies. The article examines the history of the emergence of online distance learning, presents the results of research carried out by scientific organizations and universities in order to study the features of the organization of the educational process in conditions of distance learning, the life of participants in the educational process in schools, and their well-being in lockdown. To reduce the negative consequences of lockdown on children and adolescents and distance learning, medical and social approaches have been analyzed and substantiated.Conclusion. The solution of problems related to distance education can be realized in the course of scientific and methodological support and examination of the experiment on the implementation in 14 constituent entities of the Russian Federation of the target model of the digital educational environment in the field of general and secondary vocational education, planned in Russia in 2020–2022. For this, the Russian Academy of Sciences, represented by the Department of Medical Sciences and the Section of Preventive Medicine, the Ministry of Health of Russia, and Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) have to be participants.