How the lockdown changed the approach to teaching foreigners

The restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has made major adjustments to the educational process. However, the long period of distance learning made it possible to gain useful experience that can be applied after the lockdown.

Today Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) is introducing mixed formats of education. This approach has proved to be especially useful for foreign students, some of whom still cannot attend classes in person.

Despite the difficulties, the faculty completed the lockdown semester with drafts of online tasks, and in summer, in preparation for the academic year, they got down to the development of full-fledged content for the remote format. Many lecturers made whole new programs and courses in their subjects. They had to reevaluate all the educational literature and translate it into the online format, so that it was still interesting, clear and at the same time the essence was preserved.

The university invited videographers to help its faculty, lectures are filmed in small blocks, edited and posted on the institute’s online resource.

More than 1.5 thousand foreign students from over 80 countries of the world study at MAI, about half of them are at forced distance learning, staying in their home countries.