BSMU teachers take part in the Online Conference “Transition to online learning: best practices”

The abrupt transition to mass remote and online training has come suddenly and affected almost all teachers, not only in Russia, but also in the world. At the beginning of this academic year, no one expected that there would be a need for rapid and mass introduction of remote education in universities, institutes and educational organizations.

On Saturday, April 18, half of the world gathered for participating in the International Online Conference for teachers of Russian as a foreign language Transition to online learning: best practices. The Conference was dedicated to the problems, methods and prospects of remote learning. The speakers were teachers from Turkey, China, Iraq, Singapore, Estonia, the United States of America, the Netherlands, India, representatives of Tartu (Estonia), Sichuan (China), Baghdad (Iraq), Yale (USA) universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Russian language Centers from all over the world and, of course, from Russia. Teachers from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Pushkin State Institute of Russian language, Pskov State University and Bashkir State Medical University represented our country.

The following sections were introduced for the participants:

• Organization and experience of transition to remote/online training
• The use of digital tools
• Digital platform
• Using apps in remote/online learning
• Online games in the practice of teaching Russian as a foreign language

The participants shared their experience of emergency transition to online learning, overcoming psychological difficulties arising from such a transition, organizing individual and group classes, monitoring the educational activities of students, and many other aspects of distance learning. Russian language teachers of our University Lyubov Linnik and Mary Petrosyan shared the experience of the transition to online training in Bashkir State Medical University and conducted workshops on the use of the Voov and Google platforms in online teaching. Our specialists showed the participants the advanced features of these Internet resources. For example, they allowed to include not only interaction with students from various countries studying the Russian language to online classes, that no doubt promotes more intensive development of communicative competence of students and stimulates interest in online learning the Russian language, but also online visits to various museums, galleries, exhibitions, integration of online excursions in the educational process, that gave the opportunity to apply a linguistic and cultural approach to learning Russian.

The experience of BSMU teachers interested all participants of the Conference, raised many questions and desire to apply the technologies developed at our University for studying Russian in educational institutions around the world and in Russian cities.

Video of the Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRuN9PD9aeg