Students' perception of digital opportunities in university education

The article attempts to reveal the content aspects of students' perception and evaluation of digital technologies in higher education in comparison to the teachers' opinions. The analysis made on the basis of a survey among teachers and students of the University of Tyumen in 2021 identified the most popular types of digital technologies and the criteria for their evaluation. The most popular digital technologies among students are search engines, services for preparing presentations, platforms for distance learning, and services for communication between teachers and students. Therefore, the most common ways to use them are searching for educational content, communicating with other students, creating texts and presentations. According to students, digital technologies are widespread in university education, but only some of them are actively used by teachers in certain types of educational work. Correlation analysis of students' answers made it possible to identify links between the forms of academic work and the use of digital technologies. Teachers apply digital technologies to organise students' research and study, their project activities, group work in the classroom, individual assignments and tutorials. At the same time, in group and project work, students use digital products to create texts, presentations, infographics. Teachers, according to students' answers, provide educational content (video lectures, text files) during lectures and seminars and also communicate with students using digital technologies. Among the reasons of choosing digital technologies, students emphasize the criteria of “user” (convenience, accessibility, simplicity of technology) and utility (the ability to use technology to deal with educational problems). At the same time, teachers single out, mainly, external reasons why students use digital technologies: the natural requirements of the time, the requirements of the educational process, and teacher's requirements. At least half of the students surveyed believe that digital technologies contribute to the development of their ability to learn and adapt to changes, to broaden their horizons and awareness, to advance their cognitive activities, to be interested and self-organized. Teachers showed similar trends in student responses, but, at the same time, the digital opportunities to provide personal development are rated much lower. The main risks in using digital technologies, according to more than half of the students, are a decrease in the quality of communication and interaction, the difficulty of recognizing the emotional states of communication partners, the loss of social skills, and the loss of the ability to absorb information in large volumes.

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