Equally important to discuss issues that are slowing down the transition process from offline education to online version of it with help of digital communication platforms for that. Among such reasons, there are financial, social/cultural, and psychological and all of them are influencing the expansion of digital communication platforms usage at universities in Russia. At first, the cultural dimension is particularly substantial for such a problem as Russian culture is recognized as a high power distance country. (Mcdonald, 2017) This means that people who have a lower place in society have a big gap with those who higher status. The declaration was concluded according to Hofstede's model of various dimensions of culture. (see Fig.4.) With this intention, management of universities such as rectors has low contact with representatives in the ministry of education of the Russian Federation what is utterly necessary for real improvements at universities. Nonetheless, the best solution is a common solution when all parties are coming to a consensus by collaborating. However, this task is not so easy for rectors and professors who have their opinions and suggestions for education progress, too.
Figure 4. Hofstede cultural model in Russia (Mcdonald, 2017)
Secondly, such a transaction requires huge investments which should be spent on the support of professors, procurement of digital textbooks, access to study sources, and social networks. The aid for professors can be based on presenting them laptops or even purchasing them online or offline courses for improvement of their skills in work with computers, the Internet, and of course, with social networks. Surely, such courses should also contain the information on how to teach online and how to you’re a certain social media which was chosen by the management of a university as an official one. For instance, United Arab Emirates declared that Google Handouts Meet, Blue Jeans, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, Avaya Spaces, Blackboard, and Cisco Webex will work properly all the time
what a turning point for evolution in education and business will be. (McFarlane, 2020) Another example is China and South Korea stated financial support for the development of digitalization with an educational purpose. (Strangarone, 2020 & UNESCO, 2015)
The third problem is a social one as well as there are families with a big number of children.
Sometimes there can be more than one child who is a student in such families. As a rule, parents try to ensure financial support to their children, nevertheless, there are many families which could not allow buying laptops or computers for their kids. The situation leads a social inequality and disability to educate students from needy families on a totally free basis. “In the second quarter of 2020, the number of Russians with incomes below the subsistence level amounted to 19.9 million people, or 13.5% of the country's population.”
(Pyatin, 2020) Another social issue is that professors are not ready to teach through digital communication platforms as they did not have experience with it and it will take some time to learn the new model of education for them. As it was already written before in chapter 1.2.1.2., the dominant number of professors are in the age group which is not familiar with the Internet and with social networks. That group of teachers will need additional learning about using social networks. A bright example of that is the actions of the Ministry of Education and Science in Cyprus which adapted fast pieces of training for pedagogues.
(UNESCO, 2020) The main goal of the training to clarify professors how to teach online through social networks. (UNESCO, 2020)
The fourth issue is a psychological one that expresses in lack of motivation to teach and to learn from students and teachers. It happens as the atmosphere is switching from work and study place to home site. Not every person can study and work at home just due to lack of suitable conditions. By all means, it can be not just due to moral aspects but also due to lack of calm and quiet place at home. It is necessary especially at the first transition period when people are just getting used to a new form of studying and teaching. According to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, 88% of university professors are sure that it would be better to leave classes in offline format rather than online, however, 96% have already transferred a new online model of teaching. The statistical data underlines non-acceptance and unwillingness to work in given conditions what can be reflected in the mental health of those pedagogues. Another issue is that students who were studying not for free demanding their money back or just some of the tuition fee back as they think that online education is not qualitative enough.
All things considered, students and their relatives are wondered about tuition fees if they will be left on the same level or will be decreased. The arguments for the decrease in payment are based on the thought of some students whose education during quarantine was not organized well and students learned all materials by themselves without any online lectures. (Shuvalova, 2020) The president of Russia at the press conference in December 2020 explained the situation and gave recommendations to all universities in the country.
In fact, he clarified that universities that were well prepared for online education and organized online lectures should not do any refunds as professors were preparing and giving lectures. (Putin, 2020) Although universities could not keep the full-time learning and replace it simply by sending out materials than students must study it by themselves. Then there is a justified reason to return money back to students and to drop down the tuition fees for the next remote studying. (Putin, 2020) As well as it is not a full-time education but
distance learning with a lack of lectures, practical studies, and seminars. However, there are no exact numbers or percentages on how much it is recommended to reduce prices for education. (Shuvalova, 2020) The last possible issue in the periods of adaptation was a slow Internet connection which was on such a level due to high demand on it. It can be explained as many universities as possible, and organizations located their students and employees at home and all of their required Internet in order to spend this time amusingly.
All the aforementioned possible issues are able to build a conception of the possible ways of solving the issues for further prospering and easiness of online education through social networks. All the written before issues should be deeper reviewed from different angles with help of the opinions of the respondents such as professors and students. The group of the respondent directly faces with issues as they ought to use digital communication platforms for daily bases in a process of education. Nonetheless, governmental organizations such as a ministry of education of the country should be also taken into account during the analysis of the possible ways of development of digital learning and teaching.
1.6 Transition back to offline education
The subchapter is required to explain the current situation after a large change. To be more precise, it is also significant to pay attention to the opinion of students regarding their transition back to an offline way of education and the result of research can be very surprising for some people. In the beginning, it is substantial to define the whole history of forms of education at higher schools. From the middle of March 2020 until the middle of February 2021 the educational process at universities on the territory of the Russian Federation was only in the online form. As a result, there were done some research based on where students told their problems, positive sides, thoughts, and feelings about the return to typical university life in Russia.
There were a couple of issues with which current students at universities faced. On the first side is a problem with dormitories as it is prohibited to live in dormitories for students according to new coronavirus laws. (Yarygin, 2021) Most of the students of Moscow, Saint Peterburg, and many other cities are living in small towns and villages and it is problematic to come every day to their universities. What is more, the distance can be very high; for example, they could live in Sakhalin but study in Moscow. Of course, it is not possible to overcome this distance every day and it is very expensive for most of the students to rent flats. Another issue is with transportation cards in Moscow which were block for students in order to eliminate their activities. Nevertheless, those cards allowed to have cheap transportation tickets but now they are not accurately working. (Yarygin, 2021) Another problem was with time management as well now students feel that it is much harder to control themselves in that sphere and not to be late for classes. (Yarygin, 2021) “The main difficulty in connection with the transition to full-time education was a disturbing sense of time. I was late for the first pair, although there were no serious reasons for this. Perhaps he just lost the habit of the usual schedule of classes." (Yarygin, 2021) It was not only a problem for students but teachers faced with that, too. According to stories of students who are studying offline now, education participants are emotionally burnout, and it was hard
to educate children for professors and difficult to accept those situations for students.
(Yarygin, 2021)
Undoubtedly, digital communication platforms left a huge mark on the attitude of today’s students and professors who quickly adapted and got used to the online style of education when you should not overcome big distances to universities, but you only need to switch on one of your social network systems which allow connecting to the education process. At the first-time participants of education were in shock from the need to use digital communication platforms which they never used before but after almost a year they got used to them and it is hard to transit from them to the traditional way of teaching and studying which was used all the time before. It can be supposed that digital communication platforms will be left in educating people at universities in Russia. At first, it can be a good tool when there are bad weather conditions or there are some issues at universities when students cannot come to the building due to that. Digital communication platforms are also suitable for uploading required material by teachers and even students and those digital communication platforms can be a tool for communication between professors and students. It allows making the educational process continues without any distance and time barrier.
To sum up, in the first chapter there is a detailed explanation of the usage of digital communication platforms in higher education in the Russian Federation. This research was conducted based on secondary information from books, journals, modern research, and online sources that helped to build a common image of the influence of coronavirus on the way of teaching and studying at Russian universities. There were determined two time periods for the investigation that was a time before and after coronavirus quarantine. The chapter narrates about internet penetration and usage of digital communication platforms in those two time periods and shows that it was changed due to pandemic social changes. It presents not the only difference between measurements at those two periods but also an overall representation of how transitions from the traditional way of education to digital communication platforms and back were coming through. It also makes an accent on how it influenced enrollees’ decisions. On the whole, the adaptation period to digital communication platforms as an instrument for studying and teaching was relatively fast going but the transition back to the traditional way of education is hard for students and professors. Another hypothesis is that digital communication platforms were developed enough for those changes, but most Russian professors and universities were not ready to accept those modifications due to some sort of reasons which were explained in the first chapter. The last should be checked accurately in each case.
2 Methodology
Due to the reason that ideas and questions which are discussed in that thesis are attested by many people today, especially those who are inextricably connected with higher education, the research is concentrated more on their attitude and comprehension toward the usage of digital communication platforms in educational purposes and mainly their perception of difference in digital communication platforms usage before and after coronavirus’s quarantine at Russian universities. Moreover, the research is aimed to trace addiction of the usage and coronavirus’s quarantine and to show the difference in point of views of dominantly of students and other representative participants of the educational system concerning the frequency of digital communication platforms usage, their abundance at higher education in the investigated country and also a variety of usage digital communication platforms apps. All this data is explored in two time periods: before quarantine and after this date.
The thesis is divided into three main parts. To be more precise, the first chapter focuses on the interpretation of the theoretical background of the research. All things considered, the part is required to support readers in understanding the goals and concept of the paper. This chapter is written based on the collection of secondary information where the information was already processed and released in journals, books, scientific articles, governmental reports, and many other relevant resources. Important to realize that the second chapter emphasizes chosen methodology for the thesis. By all means, this part clarifies the structure of the whole thesis and defines methods that were used for conducting primary information needed for the final conclusion.
The third chapter is a crucial one for the thesis and it is based on primary information analysis that differs from the two previous parts. The data which are used in the chapter was gotten with help of a survey what is a significant element of qualitative research. The way of conducting required information was selected based on its comfortability in getting broader inferences that can demonstrate the experience and opinion of education process participants. The survey assists in clarification on most of the questions and even in some question respondent has a possibility to give the broader answer on the question posed. What is more, the main participants are students who have tested conditions of study during the quarantine. It is significant to mention that all of the respondents are students at Russian universities and there was no hold any gender separation. Under those circumstances, there is a research of student’s attitude toward distance learning with help of digital communication platforms and their opinion in the change of situation after coronavirus quarantine.
To be more precise, there is secondary and primary survey analysis in order to have a better comparative analysis. There were selected four secondary surveys which were done at different Russian Universities in various periods of time from 2016 to 2020. There was chosen to consider only students’ answers from those surveys and to compare their answers with answers of primary analysis making an accent on time periods and detection of
dependence of Russian education system from coronavirus quarantine measures. Indeed, all of those surveys include a different number of participants and respondents are not separated on gender, age, faculties and any other. Moreover, the method is able to show quantitative statistics of people’s responses without unnecessary information. In the final part, there is a conclusion and recommendations for representative management of universities in the Russian Federation for solving present issues in digital communication platforms application.
3 Analysis
The information written in the chapter is conducted through a survey with students in the Russian Federation who have experienced online education due to coronavirus quarantine 2020 and who have applied digital communication platforms for distance learning.
Analysis and research are carried out based on primary information.