Creating an Online Russian as a Foreign Language Course during the COVID-19 Epidemic

In March 2020, due to the coronavirus epidemic all Italian universities switched to online classes and managed to ensure the right to education. Making the switch to online learning, teachers faced new difficulties that they had to sort out immediately. The purpose of the research is to provide scientific and methodological substantiation of the development of the online course of Russian as a foreign language at the University of Bologna. Due to the coronavirus lockdown, such a course was considered as the only possible way to provide the educational process. The author of the article made an attempt to empirically determine the potential of information technology used to organize a productive learning environment for language learners (including Russian-language learners). The article analyses the way the online educational process was organized to teach Russian to political science students of the University of Bologna (Forlì Campus). The researcher studied the structure and functions of the IOL and Virtuale learning environment on the Moodle platform, as well as the means of interaction between students and teachers. The methods for analysing distance learning research papers and empirical methods for assessing the communicative-speech activity of Italian students attending the online Russian language course were used. Apart from that, based on the results of the survey conducted to find out the learners’ attitude to online education, a psychological and pedagogical analysis of the students’ educational activities was carried out. The researcher clarified the definition of e-learning, and considered the cognitive theory of multimedia learning in terms of effective transmission of information during the educational process and direct communication with students. As for the theoretical significance of the article, the author made an attempt to substantiate the need to create and use distance courses for students learning foreign languages (in particular Russian). As for the practical significance of this work, the researcher developed practice-oriented modular computer environment to teach Russian as a foreign language and considered computer-assisted language learning. Methodologies to increase linguistic, communicative and regional geographic competencies of Italian students were developed. In addition, new multimedia educational resources were introduced into the process of teaching political science students. The author summed up the results of the study, analysed the weak and strong points of the online course and proposed the ways to improve it.