Abstract:

The current situation in the world caused by the COVID-19 pandemic imposes a number of new requirements in all spheres of life including the sphere of education. Professors and students of higher educational establishments were set a challenge to switch the educational process to remote learning in short order. The challenge created some difficulties, such as the need to choose the most appropriate and effective educational platform, adapt the material under study to digital form maintaining high quality of presenting information. Thus, in the contemporary world it is very important not only to master skills in the area of the professional career, but what is vital, is the ability to combine tasks from various scientific areas, to work as a team with other specialists and to be able to adapt and find solutions to different problems as quickly as possible. These are the skills and abilities that students acquire while working on interdisciplinary projects in a foreign language. Such interdisciplinary projects have been realised in the Institute of Radioelectronics and Information Technologies at Ural Federal University for several years so far. The results of their realization are excellent. Ural Federal University rates interdisciplinary projects as ones with the highest priority. We suggest that using information and communication technologies in the educational process at higher educational establishments represents one of the most important requirements not only at the time of virus pandemic but also in everyday life of each and every graduate. That is why the textbook which helps to form and develop competences necessary for the realization of interdisciplinary projects in a foreign language is of top value taking into account the fact that the textbook can be used not only for face-to-face learning, but also for remote learning in the digital form. So we created a textbook entitled «How to master scientific skills in English». The textbook is targeted at the formation as well as the development of all the four types of speech activities, such as speaking, listening, reading and writing. Besides the textbook «How to master scientific skills in English» is helpful in the development of a foreign language communicative research competence which the students gain in the realization of a project work in different spheres. The results of the research include the analysis of the textbook testing under the condition of face-to-face and remote learning with the students of the Institute of Radioelectronics and Information Technologies at Ural Federal University and the analysis of surveys of the students on the basis of performance under the condition of face-to-face and remote learning.

Keywords:

COVID-19 pandemic, foreign language teaching, distance learning, Information and Communication Technologies, Academic Research Work, face-to-face learning, remote learning, textbook, Interdisciplinary projects, project teaching.