English
РусскийThe article contains the critical accounts of the use of social media sites as a tool of distance learning during the 2020 global coronavirus pandemic. The need of organizing the whole learning process at a distance poses considerable challenges for university teachers. To solve these problems, many of them started to use social media sites for the purpose of teaching. It is argued that the results of this process are controversial. On the one hand, the use of social media sites, such as, for instance, Discord or VK (the latter is the most popular social media site in Russia) often entails more friendly attitudes of the students towards the teachers and, as a consequence more positive attitudes towards learning curricula. However, this process has a negative impact on the control of students’ knowledge and skills. The article puts an emphasis on the role of social media networks in improving the learning process. It is concluded that these sites can be used as a useful instrument of informing students about learning curricula. However, they cannot totally replace the modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (MOODLE) presented at the official websites of the universities. At the same time, the MOODLE system can be developed in a close interconnection with the social media sites.
Key words: higher education, distance learning, pedagogical communication, social media site, modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (MOODLE).