ATTITUDES OF RUSSIAN UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC STAFF TO FORCED DISTANT

Abstract

It is time to reflect on the experience of implementing educational programs by Russian universities
in forced distant to identify the best practices, to outline the ways to transform tertiary
education system, to optimize the work of academic staff, and to reduce the negative impact on
physical health of participants of the educational process. In academic discourse on this topic,
the voices of managerial personnel in the field of higher education are most often heard, but it is
necessary to give the floor the participants of the educational process, namely, academic staff. 

The article describes the “force majeure” experience of the university of the 5–100 program in
the implementation of educational programs in conditions of forced distant. The purpose of
the article is to identify the attitudes of university teachers to the educational activities in conditions
of forced transition to training using distant technologies, to analyze the response of teachers
to the new format of the educational process. The questionnaire of 63 teachers of the Department
of Foreign Languages of South Ural State University revealed that that the key issues
are the time spent in front of the computer screen, increased bureaucracy that deteriorates physical
health, low ICT competence of academic staff, while the main positive results are the fast
and furious professional development in the field of ICT use, increased confidence in the use of
online educational services, the possibility of individualizing the educational process, independence
from the technical equipment of the university audience. Based on the analysis of the experience
of the academic staff of the Russian university and the data of analytical reports of
the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, the author offers
a number of recommendations that will help optimize the academic staff work in emergency
situations.