Abstract:

The aim of the paper is to study the pros and cons of a new way of organising teaching and learning process at university (based on the example of teaching foreign languages and linguistics at Kazan Federal University). Hybrid learning is an innovative approach that has been recently introduced in most higher educational institutions in Russia after COVID-19, so this challenge influenced both university professors/teachers and students.

The objectives of the research are: to find how effective hybrid learning is; to analyse teachers and students’ flexibility in organising educational process and using specialised software and educational platforms.

The research methodology is based on working with data taken from two surveys especially designed for teachers and students where each group shares their impressions after one academic year in the format of hybrid learning. The teacher’s survey included a set of question devoted to the development of digital educational resources and the ways they used to make these courses efficient in combination with class activities. The main challenge here is that hybrid learning is organised for students who learn foreign languages and distant learning is not a good way to show excellent results. The students’ survey contained a set of questions focusing on the ways to maintain the interest to traditional format of organising lectures, tutorials, speaking classes in comparison with hybrid learning. Also the paper deals with the analysis of term results: e.g. Academic year 2019/2020 (traditional form + distant learning) vs Academic year 2020/2021 (hybrid learning).

The results of the research reveal the main drawbacks of this new way of organising studying process at university (assessment, technical errors, overloading, etc.); and at the same time positive attitude of the students to this innovative change.

Keywords:

Hybrid learning, linguistic education, foreign language teaching, digital educational resources.