Distance learning is becoming more and more relevant. Using modern technical advances, you can simultaneously improve the skills of employees from branches, promptly convey and update information, because the information that was relevant yesterday is already outdated today.

How to organize distance learning from scratch? Are you an employee of the training department and understand that for optimal business development you need to implement eLearning in your company, but don't know where to start? Then you might find the tips below helpful.

If you set a goal: to launch distance education just to teach employees, then you will receive training for the sake of training, this is obviously a false path. But if you want your employees to acquire the necessary skills after a certain time after the implementation of eLearning, then you are focused on the result.

Think of criteria by which you can evaluate whether you are successfully implementing online learning or not. For example, after completing training in your company, sales increased, expenses for trainers who previously needed to travel around the regions (payment for business trips, travel and accommodation), etc., decreased.

Define short term and long term goals. Use the “small steps” tactic. For example, a short-term goal might be to launch a pilot project or create a teaser for your distance learning.

Long-term goals are set a year or two ahead. When you have already launched distance learning and completed a pilot project (which we will talk about in more detail later).

Set goals, define tasks and develop a plan according to which you will move tomorrow, a month and a year after the start of training. Divide the whole process into steps.

Let us consider in more detail for what purposes it is better to use each of the tools.

Webinar

Webinars are needed if you need feedback during the course. This is a lesson that is conducted online, and the speaker can be anywhere, be it a company office, cafe or home. Employees from several branches can attend the webinar at the same time, while the quality of training does not suffer, and the cost of face-to-face classes is reduced.

While reading material in the webinar format, you can simultaneously show presentations, include videos, send links to resources to participants. In turn, participants can use the chat, ask questions. You can record the lecture and send it to employees to consolidate the material.

It should be noted that a webinar is not the most economical option for training. A business coach needs to prepare for a class that not all students will be able to attend due to being busy. Webinars are suitable for the presentation of simple products, small group sessions. Usually webinars are enough for training in companies up to 100 people.

From the book, you will learn how to avoid typical mistakes when conducting a webinar and manage the attention of listeners.

Distance Learning System (LMS)

This is a virtual classroom in which learning takes place anywhere in the world, users can assign training courses, organize testing, and hold a webinar.

LMS is used to solve the following problems:

1. Create a training base for the company. The system can include electronic courses, videos, simulators, instructions, books and tests. The database can be used by any of your employees, wherever they are.
2. Remotely train staff. You can assign a separate course for any of the employees or the whole group.
3. Check the knowledge of employees. For your convenience, the system has the ability to compile statistics on academic performance, attendance and progress for each of the employees.
4. Organize the exchange of experience. In internal chats, students can exchange views on the material studied, ask questions to more experienced workers and mentors.

For example, it is necessary to train employees of the sales department. A training course is drawn up from the theoretical material, and at the webinar the coach gives a practical task and answers the questions of the students.

Another case of using distance learning systems:

If you want to launch distance learning faster, choosing a cloud platform is the best solution for you. When using a server-installed system, you may run into problems. For example, you may need an IT specialist to install and maintain it, and if your company does not have such a helpful person with a technical background, you are provided with additional costs. Launch time - 3-4 months.

Cloud systems do not require installation on a server, only Internet access is needed to work with them. You can launch it in 1-2 days, and training can begin immediately after registration. It can be managed by 1 person who does not have special skills. If you plan to use LMS, you will be useful

Course editor

Some platforms, such as Docebo, have a built-in editor, but it has limited functionality, for example, you cannot create tests after the course. Therefore, we immediately advise you to purchase 1 editor license. Existing solutions can be explored in the course editors overview article.

If you are familiar with the PowerPoint program, then you can easily make slides with text and graphics, in which you can add animation, record a video. You will need tools to create e-learning courses and tests. The choice of tools plays a big role at the stage of layout of an electronic course. And even if there is no special education, the easy-to-use iSpring Suite services will help.

At the start of the project, you will have to make a lot of changes to the existing course, and this is difficult to do with contractors. In addition, without the skill of developing courses, you will not be able to draw up the correct terms of reference for contractors. As a result, you get a bad result and wasted money.

Also, third-party developers may not know the specifics of your business, and therefore will not provide the proper level of expertise.

At the start of the project, courses can be done independently, it is much cheaper. And already when scaling elearning to the whole company, you can turn to third-party developers. At that moment, you will already “fill the bumps” and will know exactly what a working course looks like.

Tip 4: Create a test group and pilot the project

A pilot run is a test drive of your course. With it, you can evaluate the quality of the training system, find errors and make the material as useful as possible. In corporate training, the importance of a pilot run is often underestimated, as a result of which employees are reluctant to learn from an unproven system. Launching a learning system immediately after development without debugging it in a focus group can greatly reduce its effectiveness and lead to a loss of time and money.

To conduct a dress rehearsal of your training system, you will need a test group. A company can have quite a large number of employees. There is no point in doing classes with everyone at once. In the test group, you can take a small number of employees potentially loyal to the company, after working with whom you will determine the weaknesses of the chosen training system. From the focus group survey, you will understand whether it was difficult or easy to use the system, how the course opened and what difficulties arose in the process. For a focus group, 10 specialists are enough. They usually run on experienced employees, representatives of the sales department.

Feedback is very important. Make the questionnaire as detailed as possible so as not to miss important points. Let it include several dozen questions. The questionnaire will help you quickly process the information, and after it is collected, you will make the necessary changes to the system and make it more accessible to your employees.

The feedback questionnaire may include questions such as:

1. What did you like about the course?
2. Was the training interesting?
3. Was it easy to study the material?
4. What additions can be made?
5. Were there any errors?
6. What skills did you gain after completing the course?
7. How will classes help you in your work?
8. Is the course material consistent?
9. Were there difficult questions?
10. Does feedback work?

When conducting surveys, identify for yourself the people who most actively and extensively provide answers and suggest options for improving the system. This will help form your own team of internal experts. Actively interacting with them will help you do your work more productively. Using their experience and advice, you will generate new ideas for the development of the company. Choose techniques to motivate them.

To collect feedback, use the reports in the LMS. Modern systems have dozens of different reports that will not only help assess knowledge, but also assess the complexity of the course. Read more about how metrics in LMS help make learning more effective in the article.

For example, iSpring Online has a number of metrics to help evaluate the health of a course:

If your employees learn with pleasure, if you see positive results, the learning process within the company is optimized, which means the system works for the business.

Internal PR will help raise the authority of distance learning, your employees will study on their own, and not under the pressure of superiors. PR elements can be news, announcements, course teasers, greeting videos, awards and congratulations.

A teaser is a preparatory stage that will help to encourage employees to introduce a new form of training for them, show the opportunities and benefits that await them, and arouse interest and enthusiasm. You can make a teaser yourself, and your future students will be pleased to see live material in a video or presentation.

This video shows a well-designed teaser for the implementation of the new teaching system at the University of Florida:

Employee motivation is an important component of the success of your project. Students should understand why they personally will benefit from training and where they can apply the knowledge gained.

Launching eLearning, like any long-term project, requires careful preparation. The extent to which the idea, goals and objectives of your distance learning are worked out determines whether its implementation in the company will be successful.

The advice given in the article may seem obvious, but many specialists in the training department make mistakes, which then cost the company hundreds of thousands of rubles. You have the opportunity to avoid them and use all the possibilities of distance learning.

Russian companies have long recognized that distance learning brings tangible results and saves resources. Now managers and specialists involved in training and development of personnel are most interested in how to implement the eLearning system at minimal cost and in the shortest possible time. Yulia Shuvalova, Development Director of iSpring, shares her professional recommendations.

Russian business no longer needs to prove the advantages of eLearning: the remote educational format allows companies to effectively solve many business problems:

• Cover training for an unlimited number of employees, even from geographically remote areas.
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of the company's products and services.
• Save money on organizing training and trips to branches.
• Provide continuous training for employees.
• Promptly carry out slices of knowledge.

For employees, distance learning has its advantages:

• Possibility to study at any time.
• Ability to study anywhere: courses and tests can be taken from your mobile devices.
• Choice of individual learning pace.
• The possibility of self-development, broadening horizons.
• It's interesting, modern and exciting.

It doesn’t matter if your company is large or small, you can quickly implement distance learning if you answer three questions:

1) what tools to choose?

2) what resources of the company need to be involved?

3) how to measure efficiency?

Choosing a learning tool

The launch of eLearning in any company is primarily associated with the choice of a distance learning system (LMS). This is a virtual room where you can train and test the knowledge of employees, no matter where they are.

When choosing a distance learning system, determine: it will be a finished product "in a box" (installation on the company's server is required) or a cloud solution (allows you to deploy LMS on a remote service).

What is the main difference?

By buying a "boxed" program, you are actually blindly implementing a system that your employees will be forced to use for a very long time. And if for some reason it turns out to be inconvenient, the company is unlikely to agree to change it: after all, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of rubles, have been invested in the purchase. You will have to purchase the system taking into account the number of employees you plan to train. In addition, a “stationary” LMS requires significant technical capabilities, and its maintenance requires the help of IT specialists.

For quick implementation of LMS, it is better to use cloud technologies. They save time and budget and do not require the involvement of technical specialists for deployment and management. There are many worthy cloud LMSs on the Russian market: iSpring Online, Competentum, WebTutor, Mirapolis and others.

As a rule, such systems have a trial period and a flexible payment system. You will be able to test the LMS on a group of employees, and then extend this experience to other departments.

What should any SDO be able to do?

Provide a full-fledged learning process by analogy with full-time. Everything is like at school, only remotely.

1) provide access to the virtual classroom for the student and the teacher;

2) organize students into groups according to common characteristics (for example, sales department employees, development department employees);

3) invite users to training, assign training courses and tests to an employee or group of employees;

4) upload materials of any format (lectures, presentations, videos, documents, graphics);

5) maintain distance learning standards in which you develop courses (AICC, SCORM, xAPI, BlackBoard);

6) ensure regular monitoring of the learning process through reports;

7) conduct testing with closed and open questions.

But this is only the upper layer of tasks that the LMS solves. Modern systems provide much more opportunities, the main thing is to correctly identify the selection criteria:

• Will the system allow organizing mobile learning on tablets, smartphones?
• Will the courses be available when there is no internet connection?
• Can I set up an individual learning path for an employee or group?
• Does the LMS contain the required types of reports?
• Does it allow webinars?

It is best to make a wish list and check if the LMS matches it. Include in your checklist only the functionality that is really needed to solve your learning tasks.

Checklist example

Required number of users

• from 100 to 150 people

Need for service by technicians

• not required

Differentiation of user roles

• administrators, teachers, students

Ability to divide users into groups

Access to the student's personal account

• online

Supported media formats

• DOC, PDF, MP3, MP4, XLS, SCORM 2004

Ability to take courses on mobile devices

Possibility to study in the absence of the Internet

Possibility of holding webinars

Ability to customize an individual program for each student

Opportunity for teacher feedback

• online and offline

Reports

• on the progress of each student / group of students
• about courses viewed by the student about tests taken
• about attended webinars

Possibility to download the report in excel, pdf format

Having a certificate upon completion of training

Availability of technical support from the supplier

Remember: if you wind up a list of hundreds of items, you most likely will not find a suitable LMS provider. And if you find it, then just waste the company's money, because you are unlikely to use all the functionality. For example, some companies ask for a large number of reports, which are then never opened.

What else?

In addition to the distance learning system itself, you will need a tool for developing electronic lectures, tests and other educational materials.

There are no universal tools, or rather, there are no universal learning rules that could be guided by. Each business has its own characteristics, so successful companies usually use two or three tools to develop courses.

There are not many providers of such solutions on the domestic market (the most famous are iSpring Suite and CourseLab). Among foreign analogues, Articulate is sometimes chosen, but it is suitable for companies where the budget is not limited. In addition, Articulate technical support is located abroad and is not provided in Russian. This significantly complicates the prompt resolution of emerging issues.

If the task is to implement distance learning quickly and at minimal cost, choose simple tools for a reasonable price. They do not require the involvement of technical experts, they have an intuitive interface, and your HR specialists will be able to create electronic courses on their own.

It's even easier when a set of modules is integrated with popular applications that every employee knows, such as the Microsoft Office suite.

It happens that a company has already developed a large number of educational materials ^ they just need to be “translated” into an electronic format and provided to employees with access.

A big plus is the ability to test the functionality for free before buying. Then you will know for sure that you are purchasing a quality tool that meets your expectations.

Additionally, it is worth finding out if training is provided from the developer, instructions or video tutorials for a quick introduction to the software product.

How to estimate labor costs

Evaluation of labor costs depends on the goals of training and is directly related to the choice of implementation tools, which were discussed above. If the product is complex, then it will take more time and resources to work with it.

You must be clear about the distance learning outcome you want to achieve. The more specific the goal is formulated, the easier it will be to go to it. For example : by September 1, 80 employees of the production department in 3 branches must complete a course on labor protection.

To measure effort, it's important to understand who will be creating and maintaining the learning materials, as well as the number of courses you plan to create. If you choose a simple option, your employees will cope with it, which means that the company will save time and money.

Quick scenario (company employees involved)

1) HR specialists think over the content of the course, the form of presentation (presentation, video lecture, game, interactive simulator, etc.), select materials (text, audio, video, images).

2) The developer (this may be the same HR specialist) arranges the content into an electronic course.

3) The system administrator uploads the course to the LMS, assigns courses, and then collects training statistics.

Pros of this scenario:

Your employees will be able to share their experience with the tool,

The launch of eLearning does not depend on external contractors.

Long script (involving an external development team).

1) Setting a task for an external developer, immersing him in the context of the situation.

2) Coordination of terms and conclusion of contracts.

3) Collection and transfer of materials, discussion of the submission form, course structure.

4) Course development.

5) Coordination, editing.

In this case, the process of launching eLearning can take a year or more.

If there are no specialized IT specialists in the company’s staff, you will have to contact external developers every time to update the courses, which means again wasting time and money.

How to measure the effectiveness of the eLearning system

Even before the launch of distance learning, answer the question, how accessible and useful was the e-learning course?

The fact is that distance learning has its own specifics. Employees can take courses at any convenient time and in any place. At this moment, the teacher may not be in touch, it will not be possible to clarify the details. Therefore, the educational material should be understandable, structured, visual and, most importantly, close to practice.

Give employees practical knowledge: how to behave in a situation with a dissatisfied client, what you need to know in order to competently answer a buyer’s question, etc.

As practice shows, to monitor training, you need to know only two things: how each individual employee learns, which courses (topics) are of the greatest and least interest.

After training, evaluate the effectiveness in a comprehensive way:

• Collect employee feedback.
• Compare the achievements of those who study remotely and in person.
• Regularly conduct knowledge cuts.
• Estimate the percentage of successful completion of training relative to the total number of those who completed the course.
• Track how the successes of employees are changing, whether performance indicators are improving (the number of closed deals, completed projects, etc.).

In fact, the formula for success is simple: convenient and high-quality development tools, an adequate assessment of the goals and learning outcomes, the availability of a minimum budget and resources to start. The competition is growing and the company whose staff has up-to-date knowledge and constantly develops will win. Start implementing the eLearning system and soon you will be able to appreciate the first fruits of distance learning.

Yulia Shuvalova, director of development of the companyiSpring

for teachers

educational institutions

Organization of distance learning

via

modern ICT

g. o. Novokuibyshevsk, 2009

Published by decision of the Editorial Board of the "Resource Center" of the city of. Novokuibyshevsk.

Compiled by: , Methodist.

Responsible editor: , head of the media library.

Reviewers:

Resource Center Director

Deputy Director of the Resource Center

Organization of distance learning using modern ICT: Guidelines for teachers of educational institutions. - Mr. o. Novokuibyshevsk, 2009 - 32 pages.

Where it is methodically justified, sound, animations, graphic inserts, video sequences, etc. are included in hypertext, however, it must be remembered that excessive visibility reduces the material absorption rate.

The training material should be available to the cadet, if possible, in several forms, for example: via the Internet, on a CD, in printed form.

In general, the following content components are included in the structure of the material:

actual training material, including the necessary illustrations; instructions for its development; questions and training tasks; control tasks and explanations for their implementation.

As practice shows, when building a distance course, the most effective multimedia presentation of educational information.

It is known from psychology that the result of one's own work causes certain positive emotions, which give rise to additional motivation for learning. It is also known that for better assimilation of the material, each person develops individual methods of work and memorization.

A multimedia course based on the use of modern network technologies allows the cadet to illustrate the text being studied at his own discretion, making it more personal (to select the content in accordance with his individual needs, to choose and fix in the text the ways that are most effective for him personally). Multimedia elements create additional conducive to the perception and memorization of the material. It becomes possible to use the student's subconscious reactions, for example, summing up or issuing a task in each lecture of the course can be preceded by a certain sound (melody), setting the cadet to a certain type of work.

In addition, a multimedia course can be used repeatedly and multifunctionally: a part of a course or lecture can form an independent fragment of a lesson for repetition or control without additional efforts of the teacher. The course can be based not only on an extended model of a textbook (text), but also on an extended model of a lecture-process (“presentation”), which also creates additional opportunities for managing and self-managing cognitive processes.

Recently, the means of “3D technologies” on the Internet, three-dimensional volumes, which are an improved electronic model of not a book page (like a Web page), but a room, a museum hall, a city square, etc., have become widespread. 3D objects have the effect of presence : you can choose the viewing angle of objects, you can move from one object to another, etc. The 3D model in terms of organizing distance education can be considered as a further improvement in the ways of representing educational material, which significantly stimulate cognitive interest. The expansion of virtual possibilities and the introduction of the principles inherent in hypertext into such a model make it possible to successfully use it for educational purposes.

4. Organization of distance learning process

When organizing distance education, direct participants in this process play a huge role - both students and teachers, coordinators of distance courses, consultants and curators of study groups. All of them use the possibilities of the Internet to solve specific pedagogical problems. Moreover, if it is quite enough for a trainee to simply master the Internet at the user level, then certain knowledge and skills are required from teachers and curators to organize the work of cadets in a telecommunications environment within the framework of the set didactic tasks:

knowledge of the purpose, design features and functioning of the telecommunications environment; knowledge of the conditions of storage and transmission of information within the network; knowledge of the main network information resources and features of working with them; knowledge of the peculiarities of organizing and conducting telecommunication projects; knowledge of the features of organizing and conducting thematic teleconferences; knowledge of the methodological foundations of organizing the work of the teacher and students in the network; knowledge of the basic rules of user behavior in the network, the basics of telecommunications etiquette; ability to work with e-mail, telecommunications, network information services; the ability to select and process information received over the network; the ability to search for information on the network; the ability to prepare information for transmission over the network using a text editor, a graphics editor and the necessary utilities; the ability to organize, develop and conduct a network training project, a thematic teleconference.

To create an uninterrupted learning environment, the interaction of its components at three levels is necessary:

the level of management elements at which the interaction of the structural divisions of the organization responsible for the organization and planning of training courses, the development of training materials and the provision of them to cadets takes place; the level at which the interaction of participants in the educational process takes place: teachers, cadets, coordinators; the level of delivery elements, including various telecommunication means of delivering educational information and teaching aids from the leading organization to the student, as well as means of delivering reporting materials and examination papers from the cadet to the teacher.

To successfully manage the process of distance education, it is advisable to use various memos, cadet class schedules, guides and explanations that will help cadets plan their working time, orient themselves in educational materials and successfully complete training in compliance with all deadlines.

It is very important to calculate the optimal duration of the training course, as its effectiveness is reduced if the duration is too long. With the modular construction of courses, it makes sense to first include less short-term modules in the plan, then large ones, and finally short ones again.

The organization of distance education requires the involvement of specialists of various professions: managers and course organizers, pedagogical coordinators and curators, teachers, highly qualified methodologists for the development of educational materials, technical specialists and system operators involved in the technical support of the educational process.

Particular attention should be paid to the teachers-curators and teachers-coordinators, where it is important to provide feedback and organize communication between the participants of the training. They must be highly qualified in the field of teaching, be proficient in learning theory, be able to create and manage the educational environment, be able to manage the structure of the training course, know pedagogical technologies and telecommunications, be able to present educational material (it is interesting to present new material, ask questions, lead lesson and organize feedback), be able to communicate with cadets.

The teacher-curator provides communication between students and teachers and course authors, as well as promptly answers questions about the course, monitors the timeliness of submission of reporting materials. The teacher-coordinator supports students in the field, that is, on the basis of the regional center that is associated with the parent organization. He acts simultaneously in several persons: as a secretary, an administrator, a technical consultant and as a teacher-adviser. He must be able to organize individual group training, solve technical problems, instruct cadets, evaluate and control their work, and maintain course documentation.

Technical specialists (they can be not only engineers, but also methodologists or administrators who understand the peculiarities of the network technologies used) solve technical problems as soon as possible, provide the necessary advice or technical assistance to needy participants in distance education to work with technology.

Each of the participants in the process can interact with other specialists and with each other. Interaction between participants is the key to any educational program.

Cadets work most of the time on their own. If they have a desire to ask a question to a teacher or partner, then they need to make some efforts (compose the text of the question, send it by e-mail and wait for a response). On the one hand, this makes the cadet more thoughtful about the material, think over the wording of questions, on the other hand, this can lead to carelessness in work, if for some reason the cadet does not want to ask questions, leaves the problem unresolved, thereby allowing a certain gap in his knowledge. Therefore, course programs should maximally stimulate interactive interaction between cadets and teachers, between cadets themselves, as well as between cadets and educational material to improve the quality of training and motivation. The organization of group work of cadets, frequent exchange of questions and answers, project work, etc. can help with this.

Providing feedback between the cadet and the teacher allows you to constantly monitor the activities of the cadets, the problems that they have. The feedback mechanism is aimed at checking the fulfillment of goals and objectives for each stage of training. Feedback can be carried out in any form, including in the form of control testing (initial, intermediate, final), discussions, teleconferences. To do this, you can use various questionnaires and tests, for answers to which cadets just need to enter an answer in the required line of the form or select the correct answer from several proposed options, and then send it by e-mail.

In the process of distance education, it is very important to organize a prompt response of teachers to the questions of cadets. Computer telecommunications create all the necessary conditions for this, providing prompt transmission of information by e-mail or organizing consultations within the framework of a teleconference.

With distance education, the participants in this process do not see each other, unless, of course, videoconferencing is used, communication occurs, as a rule, in a verbal form. Therefore, the learning process can be personalized by introducing participants to each other so that communication is lively, personal.

The teacher's functions are reduced to monitoring the learning process for the assigned tasks, advising cadets on problematic issues, organizing and conducting discussions on the issue under study, as well as monitoring the level of assimilation of educational material.

The information flow that occurs between the teacher and the cadet, carried out using telecommunications, is two-way - part of the information goes from the teacher to the cadet, and the other - from the cadet to the teacher. If a group of cadets interacting with the teacher is formed in the process of learning, then the information flow forms several more directions: from the teacher to the whole group, from the whole group to the teacher, from the cadet to the group, from the group to the cadet, etc.

Some authors (V. Dombrachev, V. Kuleshev, E. Polat) single out constant (“static”) and variable (“dynamic”) components in the information flow of distance learning. They include materials that are transmitted to students simultaneously before the start of training and for a long time, for example, basic textbooks and teaching aids, curricula, recommendations for studying educational material, questions for self-control, etc.

The variable component includes educational materials and correspondence transmitted from the teacher to students and back in the learning process, for example, the teacher's comments on the student's answers to control questions, recommendations for studying the material, the student's answers, coursework materials, etc.

To implement such a process that is complex in terms of the dynamics of information flows, training tools based on modern information technologies are required. At the same time, traditional means can also be widely used:

educational books, manuals, reference books, didactic materials on a printed basis; audio recordings; video recordings; natural didactic aids; computer programs for educational purposes.

The same teaching aids, but in electronic form (as a rule, archives), can be stored on the network server and used by the trainee in the process of work.

Along with the “classical” construction of a distance course, telecommunications projects can also be used in the practice of distance education. Students can take part in projects both individually, being included in a project developed by a group of colleagues, geographically separated and supervised by the coordinator of the educational sector, and a group led by their teacher. The activity of trainees within the framework of projects is most effective if it is preceded by a certain systematic training course that prepares the trainee for participation in a telecommunications project.

In distance education, the following types of projects can be distinguished:

Research . Such projects are characterized by the presence of clearly defined goals that are relevant and significant for the participants, a well-thought-out and justified structure, the wide use of an arsenal of research methods, the use of scientific methods for processing and presenting results. At the same time, the principle of accessibility and content of research methods is put at the forefront. The topics of research projects should reflect the most pressing problems in the development of the subject area, take into account their significance for the development of research skills of cadets.

Gaming . In such projects, the role-playing game becomes the main content, when participants (cadets) take on certain roles for business imitation and resolution of fictional or real professional situations. Game projects, in our opinion, should be preceded by the participation of cadets in research projects in order to deeply master the factual material, which is the basis for conducting role-playing games.

Practice-oriented. The peculiarity of this type of project is the preliminary setting of a clear, significant for the cadet result, which has practical significance, expressed in material form: preparation of a magazine, newspaper, reader, video film, computer program, multimedia products, etc. The development and implementation of this type of project requires details in the elaboration of the structure, the definition of the functions of the participants, intermediate and final results. This type of project is characterized by tighter control by the project coordinator and author.

Creative . Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they do not have a predetermined and detailed structure. In a creative project, the teacher (coordinator) determines only the general parameters and indicates the best ways to solve problems. A necessary condition for creative projects is a clear statement of the planned result, which is significant for the cadets. The specificity of such a project involves intensive work of cadets with primary sources, with documents and materials, often contradictory, not containing ready-made answers. Creative projects stimulate the maximum activation of the cognitive activity of students, contribute to the effective development of skills and abilities to work with documents and materials, the ability to analyze them, draw conclusions and generalizations.

A detailed methodology for using projects within the framework of distance education has not yet been developed either in the methodological literature or in practice.

In conclusion, it should be noted that this lecture only introduces the phenomenon of distance education. Teaching the technological foundations of organizing distance education requires, at a minimum, mastering the following methods:

goal-setting and development of learning criteria; planning and selection of training content, development of methodological apparatus; online representation of educational material; choice of forms of network interaction between the teacher and students; the formation of criteria-oriented tools for monitoring the assimilation of the material and the development of procedures for their application.

5. Basic technologies of distance learning.

The distance education system should create the most creative and logical information environment around the participants in the educational process (administration, teachers and students), convenient for a quick and well-structured exchange of educational, methodological and administrative information that constitutes the content of the learning process.

Distance learning uses various information and communication technologies (most often a combination of different technologies). Modern distance education technologies streamline the process of managing the education system, optimize the assimilation of knowledge through the formation of a specialized information environment that is convenient for a person who habitually uses the Internet to obtain information and interpersonal communications.

The Internet as a whole is an almost ideal technical medium for distance education. But it must be remembered that any training requires a certain organizational and informational support. You need to have the following structures:

support for the design of educational material;

delivery of educational material to students;

Support for "reference" materials;

· consultations;

knowledge control;

Organization of communication between listeners.

By Internet technologies in general, we mean distance learning technology based on the use of global and local computer networks to provide students with access to educational information resources and to form a set of methodological, organizational, technical and software tools for implementing and managing the educational process, regardless of its location. subjects. It is the use of Internet technologies that makes it possible to most fully realize the potential of distance education.

When introducing Internet technologies into the system of distance education, it is necessary to single out two directions for the implementation of this process:

1. Management of the educational process, which is carried out by an educational institution;

2. Technological support for the functioning of the information system, which is carried out by a specialized service - provider.

Under the technological support of Internet technologies for distance education, we mean the provision of information and communication services for access to software and hardware resources, as well as technological support for all users. Here we can distinguish two options for technological support.

The first is the placement of distance education software on a server connected to the Internet, thus, in addition to educational tasks, an educational institution should also deal with special technical tasks for server maintenance.

The second option is the use of an external source in the organization of distance education. Outsourcing services (outsourcing from English - the use of an external source) are provided by distance learning service providers. In relation to the university, this means that all distance education software operates on powerful servers of a specialized provider company. All participants in the educational process perform their functions by accessing servers via the Internet, using the appropriate interfaces. Outwardly, this is no different from visiting sites on the Internet that has become customary, except that in the case of distance education, the entrance to the personal pages of participants is made after entering a login and password. Outsourcing is the most economical for universities - no costs for maintaining server equipment, system administration.

By method of obtaining educational information are distinguished: synchronous educational systems (systems on-line, in real time), asynchronous systems (systems off-line) and mixed systems.

Synchronous systems involve simultaneous participation in the process of training sessions of the trainees and the teacher. Such systems include: various web-chats, web-telephony, interactive TV, teleconferences NetMeeting, Telnet. For conducting remote lessons, it is most convenient and easy to use web chats, especially for group lessons.

Asynchronous systems do not require the simultaneous participation of students and the teacher. The student himself chooses the time and plan of classes. Such systems in distance education include courses based on printed materials, audio / video cassettes, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, e-mail, web pages, FTP, web forums (electronic bulletin board), Guest books, Teleconferences (subscription to groups news).

mixed systems, which use elements of both synchronous and asynchronous systems.

By technical basis of transmission data, the following forms of distance learning can be distinguished:

§ means of audio graphics (interactive whiteboards, as well as educational films, radio, television);

§ through interactive WebTV and video conferences;

§ Through newsgroups Usenet, IRC.

§ through e-mail and mailing lists (lists);

§ through web pages;

§ via chat, web-forum and guest book.

Recently, the Internet has been actively replacing other forms of distance learning. This is due to three things:

1) The technical development of Internet technologies, which allow you to simulate any training model;

2) Easy to connect to the Internet,

3) Relatively low connection cost.

The following factors and conditions are important for obtaining optimal results of distance learning:

Availability of a modern computer base and good access to the Internet for potential distance students,

availability of good educational resources and experience of distance education among distance teachers,

good preparation of distance lessons,

availability of trained local coordinators,

Regular remote learning

moral and material incentives for remote activities.

Optimal results of a distance lesson can be obtained when:

1. A highly informative, understandable, well-illustrated learning resource and its local version have been carefully designed.

2. Students are well prepared and have a good command of the proposed material.

3. Communication between a teacher and students via the Internet is carried out without failures and by all available means.

For this it is necessary :

create a hypertext structure, thereby combining the theoretical material of the subject into a visually presented, logical structure.

create a software package that allows students to independently control the quality and completeness of learning;

create a set of test tasks that allow the teacher to assess the completeness of the assimilation of theoretical knowledge.

It is very important in the process of conducting a distance lesson to receive some educational products, for example, in the form of an increment in the knowledge and skills of a student, or (better) in the form of a created educational document.

So, the role of distance technologies in improving the effectiveness of vocational education is certainly great. Distance learning based on Internet technologies is a modern universal form of education. It is focused on the individual needs of trainees and their specialization. Distance learning provides an opportunity for everyone to continuously improve their professional level, taking into account individual characteristics. In the process of such training, a student, for a certain part of the time, independently masters educational and methodological materials in an interactive mode, passes tests, performs tests under the guidance of a teacher and interacts with other students of the "virtual" training group.

By creating an automated learning system based on modern information and telecommunication technologies and reducing unit costs per student in comparison with traditional education systems, the distance education system makes it possible to provide a fundamentally new level of education accessibility while maintaining its quality. And although in distance learning the student and the teacher are spatially separated from each other, they are, nevertheless, in constant interaction, organized with the help of special methods of building a training course, forms of control, communication methods based on the use of Internet technologies.

Forms of distance learning

Distance learning, carried out with the help of computer telecommunications, has the following forms of classes.

Chat classes- training sessions carried out using chat technologies. Chat classes are held synchronously, that is, all participants have simultaneous access to the chat. Within the framework of many distance learning institutions, there is a chat school, in which, with the help of chat rooms, the activities of distance teachers and students are organized.

Web lessons- remote lessons, conferences, seminars, business games, laboratory work, workshops and other forms of training sessions conducted using telecommunications and other features of the World Wide Web.

For web classes, specialized educational web forums are used - a form of user work on a specific topic or problem with the help of entries left on one of the sites with the corresponding program installed on it.

Web forums differ from chat classes in the possibility of longer (multi-day) work and the asynchronous nature of the interaction between students and teachers.

Teleconferences- are carried out, as a rule, on the basis of mailing lists using e-mail. Educational teleconferencing is characterized by the achievement of educational objectives.

virtual classroom

virtual classroom is the user core of the educational IT environment and is a complex distributed system. It usually includes infrastructural software and technical components that virtually unite the workplaces of the teacher and students into a study group operating on a network (local or global). An example of a Virtual Classroom is the Internet service KMExpert - a knowledge assessment system that allows you to perform on-line testing, certification and training of employees of organizations and Internet users. KMExpert maintains a self-populated Knowledge Base containing training and control tests from various areas of knowledge and expert knowledge assessment results for these tests.

Examples of organization of distance learning:

Click here to learn more about distance education options.:

http://scholar. urc. *****:8002/courses/Technology/index. html

http://www. *****/

http://www. edu. *****/library/main. html

http://www. sdo. *****/des01.html

http://www-windows-1251.edu. *****/

http://dlc. miem. *****/

http://ido. *****/

Literature:

"Fundamentals of distance learning", textbook. Andreev in distance learning. Teaching aid. - M.: VU, 1997. The concept of creation and development of a unified system of distance education in Russia. Goskomvuz RF, M., 1995. "Distance learning: organizational and pedagogical aspects" INFO, No. 3, 1996 "Distance learning" / Textbook, ed. . - M.: Humanit. ed. VLADOS center, 1998 "Conceptual model of distance education" // Trimester - 1996, № 1 Shukshina of distance education using Internet technologies: article, Krasnoyarsk State University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia 2008. Polat and practice of distance learning: Proc. allowance for students. higher ped. textbook establishments / , ; Ed. . - M .: Publishing Center "Academy", 200c.

Expert: in Information Technology and Educational Video

Distance learning systems have long been known to university professors. But schools have recently discovered e-learning. With the help of distance learning technologies, it is possible not only to shift a number of routine pedagogical actions onto the shoulders of a computer, but also to organize truly high-quality, individual, differentiated learning. Our article today is devoted to an overview of the three most famous free systems and three paid distance learning.

Distance learning system Moodle

Distance learning system Moodle

Short description

We will start our review of distance learning services with Moodle - this is one of the most popular distance learning systems in Russia (abbreviated as LMS).

The advantages of this method:

• no need to install anything - register and get a ready-to-work system;
• there is a free plan;
• there is support for the Russian language;
• there is a video conferencing plugin;
• automatic update (a trifle, but nice).

However, you may encounter certain disadvantages of the cloud service:

• a third-level domain that is difficult for students to remember;
• only 50 registered users (for a school this is very small);
• there is no way to install your modules;
• There are ads that you can't turn off.

Edmodo

Distance learning system Edmodo

The next thing we'll look at is the Edmodo web application, as a special service on the Internet that does not need to be installed anywhere. Edmodo positions itself as a social network for education or Facebook for education - it is built on the principle of social educational networks, and the interface resembles the appearance of Facebook.

Characteristic Edmodo

The logic of work in this application is as follows. The teacher creates a group (in fact, this is an electronic course). The group has its own unique link and code that you need to share with other participants in the educational process. A group may have learning elements such as records (in the form of tests or files), tests, assignments, and surveys. You can import content from other services, such as news feeds from your school website, YouTube videos, content from other services.

There are no special bells and whistles in Edmodo, but there are simple and necessary elements - a calendar (for fixing educational events, a journal for grading, the ability to check homework, etc.).

Advantages and disadvantages of Edmodo

Let's outline the benefits of the service:

• free;
• no ads;
• simple registration;
• users are divided into three groups: teachers, students, parents (each group has its own separate registration, its own access code).

There are also certain disadvantages:

• lack of Russian language - although the interface is simple and understandable, English can be a serious obstacle to implementation;
• Edmodo groups cannot be combined, i.e. the student will have a bunch of inconvenient (and they are inconvenient) links, with a bunch of codes;
• in general, the arsenal of educational elements, although sufficient, is relatively poor - the same tests do not contain additional strategies, there are no thematic tests, etc.

Edmodo has some admin tools. Perhaps they will make it possible to create a unified electronic school environment based on this application, which can greatly facilitate the implementation of distance learning in an educational institution.

Google classroom

Distance learning system Google Classroom

Our review of free learning services is completed by an application from one of the leaders in the IT industry. It should be noted here that Google previously had a large number of educational tools in its arsenal. At some stage, Google decided to combine all these tools into a certain platform, which resulted in the creation of Google Classroom. Therefore, Classroom can hardly be called a classic distance learning system, it is more like a collaboration tape - the same Google for education, only collected in one place. Therefore, Google Classroom is ineffective, it cannot be particularly surprising, and the organization of truly effective collaboration requires, in my opinion, a lot of effort from the teacher and, most importantly, a significant restructuring of the educational process.

Previously, Google Classroom had a relatively complex registration system and user access to the course, but about six months ago, Google opened up free registration and now access to Classroom is as easy as Facebook.

Other features of Google include:

• using only Google tools (Google drive, Google docs, etc.);
• participants in the educational process create a shared folder “Class” on Google Drive;
• the “Class” folder is available both for an individual student and for the class as a whole.

Advantages and disadvantages

Among the advantages of the solution from Google are:

• support for the Russian language (the same Edmodo exists longer and has a better interface, but it never became popular due to the lack of support for the great and mighty);
• free;
• brand - everyone knows Google and the use of the world leader's products looks solid;
• Google was created specifically for schools, unlike Moodle, which is more suitable for universities;
• The traditional functions of Google are implemented well: it is possible to publish theoretical material, assignments, grades in a journal, there is a calendar.

Let's highlight the disadvantages of such a solution:

• very poor arsenal of educational elements. One of the poorest sets of training elements. On the other hand, if we consider it as a collaboration feed, then the main thing in Google will be the organization of collaboration, and not control elements such as tests (which, by the way, Google does not have);
• links to Classroom are not convenient;
• The interface leaves much to be desired.

Tests in Google Classroom

There are no tests in Google, so many people create tests based on Google Forms. It is designed to create polls, but with a certain amount of imagination, polls turn into tests with a flick of the wrist….. I recommend trying OnLineTestPad, a self-hosted web service for creating tests.

OnLineTestPad

This is a free online testing service. The network nature of testing means that you have all the data about the attempts of students, all their grades, all their correct and incorrect answers. Let's briefly outline the features of OnLineTestPad:

• the service has a large number of forms of test tasks (there are no only graphic questions);
  flexible settings (there are training testing strategies, there are random (thematic) questions, various restrictions, etc.);
• The main disadvantage is a huge amount of advertising. You can try to turn it off by "legal" actions, but this requires additional labor.
• this service causes positive feedback from teachers and teachers, is one of the best services for organizing testing.