Abstract:

The year 2020 was one of the most unpredictable and challenging for the education system due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The spread of the COVID-19 virus was a challenge for higher education and required not only a review of approaches to learning and a transformation of the familiar educational model, but also a paradigm shift in education.

The university community was faced with the challenge of thinking about contemporary challenges and finding possible answers to them. The need for universities to react quickly to global changes in the world has led to a restructuring of the educational process of a modern university based on digital technologies. Today, universities are transforming themselves and changing their environment, resonating with the external situation and acting as drivers of change.

During the first wave of the pandemic, the priority task for Russian universities was to carry out an emergency transfer to a remote format and ensure continuity of the educational process in the spring semester (March-May); to hold credits, exams and final qualifying papers online (June); to carry out an admission campaign in the mode of epidemiological restrictions (July-August).

The ongoing pandemic and the rising second wave require universities to take a systematic approach to implementing digital platforms and services and to managing the learning process based on data in order to maintain high quality learning.

The aim of the article is to study the experience of Ural Federal University teachers in organizing the educational process during the first wave of the pandemic, analyze the best educational practices and develop new scenarios of interaction between students and teachers during the forced distance learning process of the university.

Keywords:

COVID-19, higher education, forced distance learning.