Digitalization of Higher Education in the Context of the Pandemic

Within this project, a group of students is engaged in comparing different approaches and strategies for the transition from offline to online education that universities around the world are using. The project team are also developing useful materials for teachers and students. We talked to Arina Barasy, a 2nd-year student of the Master's programme in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication, who is the head of the project group. She told us about the objectives and achievements of the project.

— How do you collect and analyze data for this project? And what kind of data are you studying?
— As part of the ‘Digitalization of higher education in the context of the pandemic’ project, our research team is working with both qualitative and quantitative data that we have collected with the help of online surveys through GoogleForms. Interviews with respondents from both Russia and other countries have also played an important role in data collection. These surveys and interviews are related to experiences with a complete transition to online learning. We wanted to see a wide range of practices and attitudes and to identify the factors that affect these variables. We also investigated how working from home influences everyday life, whether the workload has changed or not, and what advantages and disadvantages of distance learning the respondents could think of. Teachers and students from such countries as Germany, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Spain, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and others were involved in the research.

— What else is the project group engaged in?
— Apart from studying the influence of the pandemic on higher education, we have also started working on a complementary study called ‘Developing Digital Competence in Students of Humanities’. In addition to the research part, we are planning to develop a practical workshop for teachers and students. We want to share the best practices of online teaching that we have discovered along with our foreign colleagues. Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to communicate with them directly.

— How many students are taking part in the project?
— There are 15 members in the project group, and I am the head of the group. Anna Gadelia, a 2nd-year student of the FLaIC Master's programme, is responsible for designing and editing the website for our project. Denis Zubalov is the academic advisor of our project. He helps us with the contents and organization of the research, as well as overseeing the writing of articles based on the results. Eleven 4th-year students of the FLaIC Bachelor’s programme are engaged in collecting and analyzing data, conducting interviews, and co-writing the articles.

— Have you already achieved any results?
— We presented a report at the eSTARS 2020 conference, and there is an article on the HSE website about our project. In addition, we are currently preparing an article for Digital Education Review journal.