Opportunities of the MOODLE Electronic Learning Environment in Organizing Stidents' Distance Learning

During the forced transition to distance learning in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire teaching community was faced with new challenges: communication gaps and students' dropping out of the educational process. This article discusses the opportunities and limitations of the MOODLE (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) platform to solve these problems. The author proceeds from the results of a student survey, which shows that a little less than a third of students have a negative impression of MOODLE, and only about one in ten has a positive impression. The majority of students express a neutral attitude. As the students' responses show, the MOODLE system is mainly used in the educational process for taking tests and posting lecture materials. However, active communication between the professor and students is not even considered as possible. Having a considerable experience in developing online courses, the author believes that MOODLE has many more opportunities for organizing the educational process; however, this requires fundamentally new approaches. These innovative approaches are illustrated by the example of practical courses for bachelor students of the Tomsk State University Faculty of Journalism (Skills of a Journalist: A Multimedia Project, etc.). They are: (1) gamification and flipped classroom technologies; (2) various methods of involving students in the educational process, maintaining their interest and stimulating them to study the subject; (3) the use of special opportunities for group communication, both in the student group, and between students and employers (mass media editors). Experience shows that the potential of the MOODLE app is rich and underestimated. The challenges of the time require the development of new tools and new approaches. It is already clear that to create successful online courses, it is not enough just to transfer content online. This requires significant content processing in accordance with the current capabilities of the electronic learning environment.

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