NEW CHALLENGES FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION

Abstract

The world has recently been divided by the pandemic, which has caused a number of medical, economic and political problems worldwide. In education, it has forced the education institutions to switch to distance learning. As a result, it has become, on the one hand, an incentive for the introduction of innovative technologies, and on the other – an indicator of its main shortcomings and problems. The paper outlines the main challenges and discrepancies caused the rapid distance education implementation brought to life by the unexpected introduction of global studying remotely. The paper studies a concept of distance education in a range of scientific works in order to find its clear definition in the scientific literature and makes an effort to distinguish the key features of distance learning through the comparison of didactic principles used in traditional teaching with modern ideas of distance education. The educational subjects’ interaction without direct communication with the teacher resulted in persuading the educational community in the inevitability of creating a specific didactic system suitable for new forms of learning. It is stated that the application of modern information technologies and successful teaching methods is not the only necessary condition for effective learning. The analysis has been made of the main difficulties teachers and learners undergone in the process of changing to the remote way of teaching. A range of techniques for maintaining teacher-student interaction is regarded as a beneficial solution on condition of establishing clear rules for such communication. However, recent observations proved that the habit of foolhardy relying on technical devices in order to achieve readymade answers have deteriorated the learners critical thinking, lessened creativeness and abilities to express their ideas clearly and correctly, which might even sometimes impede expressing thoughts both orally and in written form. The paper emphasizes the importance of developing a national unified system of distance education for regulating the relationship between distance learning participants and coordination of theoretical, methodological and organizational support.