Distance education is a modern requirement
«The future of our country is in the hands of today’s young generation,
and the fate of the rising generation is in the hands of teachers.»
N.A.Nazarbayev
The aim of today’s education system is to train competitive professionals. The school is a learning environment, the heart of which is the teacher. A feature of the work of a novice teacher is his ability to transform the lesson and find the way to the heart of a person. It is the duty of every teacher to be a teacher, respect him and keep him clean. A teacher is a person who loves his or her profession, his or her subject, all students and the school. A teacher of a new formation in a changing society is a competent person who has mastered all the pedagogical tools, striving for constant self-improvement, spiritually developed and mature. The requirements for teachers in a market environment are competitiveness, high quality teaching, professionalism and methodological skills.
A graduate of a modern school should be a person with the unique ability to think, to realise his or her ideas, to discover new things, to master creative research activities.
The pandemic regime, introduced worldwide in 2020, has had a significant impact not only on health but also on all areas of human activity, including education.
One of the major changes in education and science is the widespread use of distance learning technologies.
A widespread pandemic has hampered the education system around the world. Children no longer have the opportunity to go to school. For this reason, other forms of education have been developed. Distance learning lessons can be broadcast on TV channels, video lessons can be uploaded to dedicated platforms, audio lessons can be broadcast via radio, email and postal services such as What`sup, Zoom, etc. Our state has organised the distance learning process so that it is accessible to students. Thus, distance learning has become a requirement of modern times. Learning through TV lessons has been widely used on Balapan and Yel-Arna channels. Students read video lessons on these channels.
In distance learning, all or part of the learning process is carried out using new information and telecommunication technologies, regardless of the territorial differences between teacher and pupil. In addition, the methodological specificities of the teaching of each subject should be taken into account. For example, distance learning subjects requiring the use of laboratories are known to require careful preparation. Similarly, language subjects which require students to communicate with each other need to be well prepared.
During distance learning, «our university has a modern and developed IT infrastructure that has allowed us to cover all students with distance learning . «Univer 2.0» and «Moodle» – information and educational platforms were used. The system «Univer 2.0» is an innovative development of kaznu, which supported the educational process of students from the moment of admission to study until graduation. The software provided the opportunity to create courses and bases of educational and methodological complexes of disciplines, conduct individual or group lectures, give tasks, monitor their implementation by students, assess the degree of course development, and much more . Currently, our university is ready for the distance education system at any time.
It also provided students with various virtual programs, such as «Microsoft Teams», «Zoom», distance courses, «YouTube» streaming and other external resources in Kazakh and Russian, distance courses and student manuals in English for teaching through DOT, i.e. lectures, seminars, practical and laboratory formats.
As a teacher of history and geography, distance learning skills such as writing, reading and listening are not very difficult. However, speech development is not an easy task. Listening to each student individually takes a lot of time, and the motivation of the other students is reduced. In this case, you can give the other students additional tasks, e.g. to assess the student who is speaking. You can also give a group assignment and listen to each student individually. However, if the group is large, there may not be enough time to listen to everyone. For this reason, you can use the discussion room feature in Microsoft Teams. This feature allows you to divide a large group of students into smaller groups or pairs. As a result, students have the opportunity to develop the ability to talk not only to the teacher, but also to each other. There are also disadvantages of distance learning. For example, the teacher may have the following disadvantages:
— Every teacher should practise a little before using the platform;
— The process of completing the tasks is slower than in the classroom, so you need to prepare the lesson tasks carefully in advance, taking into account the technical situation;
— It is very important to monitor the attendance of each student, some students may turn the video away and get up and leave;
— Students can take the opportunity to access any website, copy the answers to the questions or read the finished text;
— Can type words and texts into an online translator and not think critically;
— The copying process cannot be fully controlled. The risk of students copying is very high.
The number of users of platforms such as Daryn Online and Bilimland has increased due to distance learning in the country. On these platforms, school teachers upload videos related to the lesson. The student who sees it must answer the prepared test questions. However, it should be noted that the student completes the task at any time. Students who make mistakes are contacted by the teacher and begin to work on the mistakes. «This is how the feedback will be carried out», said A. Aimagambetov.
The distance learning format has clearly shown the importance of working together to regulate the relationship between teachers and parents . The situation is better in colleges and universities. University students have experience in introducing distance learning technologies into the learning process. Therefore, universities immediately switched to distance learning without any obstacles. However, there are problems: national online seminars on various aspects of distance learning organisation take place in our country on a daily basis. It is an activity designed to improve the quality of education. Help Desk has been launched in all universities and colleges to provide technical support to students and teachers.
The world is living in a new digital age. There is a lot of talk about it. Various scenarios for the development of this system have been worked out. But in a crisis, a quick decision had to be made. Overall, the education system was able to withstand the first wave.
We will overcome this pandemic, but the education system must learn from the current situation and act accordingly.
Speaking at the final meeting of the State Commission on the State of Emergency on May 11, the Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said: «It is important to make education more flexible, develop protocols and methods of distance learning for children and students, complete the practical digitization of educational institutions in the country. There is a need to speed up the introduction of modern distance learning technologies. We are faced with the task of revising the content of educational programmes, making them accessible and interactive».
With distance learning, the work of the school and the teacher does not increase or decrease. We will use this technology when students drop out of school due to inclement weather, or when they are forced to study at home due to a child’s health condition, or when it is necessary to provide additional educational opportunities for young students.
In addition to cities, it is necessary to see the real situation in rural areas and take into account all the possibilities when making a decision. I think there is still much to review, draw conclusions and develop new strategies. In this regard, I understand that it is necessary to collect effective domestic and foreign best practices and to plan their implementation in the educational process.
At present, a special advantage of human development is the transition to the information civilisation, the rapid development of computer and information technology, which increases the intellectual potential of people. This is one of the most important areas of development in Kazakhstan. Today, the development of technology allows distance learning to be organised even through mobile applications. However, distance learning still needs to be developed, as not only technological advances are needed in this field, but also intrinsic motivation and responsibility of students for distance learning.
In conclusion, the role of distance learning is very important for education, because through this system our teachers and students have a great opportunity to communicate with global information, to improve their scientific and creative work, to deepen their knowledge in the global information space.
List of references:
- Collection of articles on distance learning in a pandemic (pages 85-87, pages 147-149)
- Collection of Scientific Articles of the IV International Forum on Informatization of Education in Kazakhstan and CIS (pp. 18-19, pp. 38-39, pp. 118-119, pp. 460-461).
- Website: www.edu.gov.kz.
- Kakoty, S., Lal, M., Sarma, S.K. (2011). E-Learning as a research area: ananalytical approach. Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl., 144-148.
Әл –Фараби атындағы ҚазҰУ
Тарих факультетінің 1-курс магистранты
Байбукашева А.О.
