Abstract:

The higher education system today has created a combination of full-time and distance learning. The Russian distance learning market is a little over 10 years old and it is just being formed. It already consists of dozens of educational online projects. However, according to the students, actual content, structured presentation of the material, multimedia effects of online courses and especially the results of this type of training are often unsatisfactory. This means that the direct transfer of pedagogical technologies from the practice of traditional education to online education, without taking into account the specifics of the target audience and the specific properties of the distance nature of learning, does not seem to be correct.

The study focuses on the identification of cognitive, emotional and other psychological characteristics that affect the success of the assimilation of the students learning material in online learning.

The pool of respondents was 270 students of Ural Federal University (Russia, Ekaterinburg) who studied one of the basic courses of the educational program in the MOOC format. The respondents 'personal sphere is investigated using a number of psychodiagnostic techniques, the key of which are the Big Five (R. McCrae and P. Costa), the progressive matrix scale J. Raven, diagnostics of motives of student learning activities (T. Gordeeva). The author’s questionnaire was also included in the research protocol. The purpose of this questionnaire is to identify the level of subjective satisfaction from studying at a specific online course. Pearson correlation analysis in conjunction with bootstrap statistical evaluation (the number of samples is 1000) was used to identify significant relationships between psychological indicators and scores obtained during the course. Each of the groups was analyzed separately.

The authors describe the correlation of learning outcomes with such individual characteristics as intelligence, self-esteem, motivation. The obtained results are not partly consistent with the classic image of an “excellent student”. Against the background of a logical connection between the level of intelligence and high final grades for studies (r = 0.15 - 0.30 on different scales, p <0.05), the interest is caused by the correlation between high grades for education and the expressed level of motivation for studying at university in whole (r = 0.11, p <0.05).

The authors conclude that the developed intellect of successful students of online courses is the basis for stable training in online format. These online courses are still unusual and not worked out methodically in Russia. In turn, the “failure” of indicators of emotional involvement in the process of online learning requires improving the content and enriching technological solutions at the stage of organizing the educational process.

Keywords:

Mass online courses (MOOK), Internet-course, adaptive learning, individual educational trajectory, psychological characteristics of students.