Abstract:

The coronavirus pandemic has produced a crisis situation in the sphere or education and rewritten the program of teaching across the world. Nowadays universities are facing significant challenges, educating students virtually, in online format. Lecturers have to find new online resources for remote teaching process. It is necessary to say that the issue of pandemic teaching requires a deliberate approach, since the COVID-19 became a source of stress for learners. For instance, according to the results of survey among students between the ages of 18 and 23 organized by the American Psychological Association, nearly 90% of participants find transition to online learning a formidable reason of stress due to the pandemic. That is why it is equally difficult to work either with students who have been studying virtually since this spring, or with newcomers. Working with students who have been experiencing elevated stress since the last academic year, teachers face a need for additional instruments of motivating the class. However, interacting with new students, teachers have to develop relationship and encourage the partner work with people who may have never met each other in person.

In this sense, RUDN University is no exception. On the contrary, being one of the most multinational university in the world and teaching students from more than 150 countries, RUDN is fully experiencing difficulties connected with the worldwide closure or restrictions of flights. In spite of the fact that this year the most half of lectures and seminars are going in the socially distant classrooms, in masked-up form, some students cannot come to Russia and join courses virtually. In this case, staff-members of RUDN work not only as lecturers and tutors, but also as social-emotional supporters and inspirers for students. The development of digital technologies helps in struggle with this outsized burden: one of the instruments of online support and motivating students became blogging. In this research, based on the analyzing blogs of concrete lecturers or whole university departments in social media, we study the motivational role of blogging in the improving educational process. The main participants of survey used in this study are students from Armenia, where the flights are closed because of the situation in Nagorny Karabakh, and Georgia, the boarders of which are still closed as well due to pandemic. This analysis gives an opportunity to identify the main trends of social media, which make online education easier, the provocative-motivational role of blogs, also to predict the future of symbiosis between education and social media.

Keywords:

Education, Mass Media, digitalization, pandemic, COVID19, blogging, social media provocation, social media.