Distance Education

As of March 16, PetrSU is now teaching online. This form of the study process is new for many teachers and students. The Department of Pharmacology, Pharmacy Organization and Economics now offers distance classes in all courses.

The students’ assignments for each course are published on the site of the Department, posted in social networks and sent to student group leaders by email. If students have difficulties with completing the tasks they reach out to their teachers individually.

Distance education as a remote interaction between a teacher and a student includes all components of the study process (goals, content, methods, organization forms, means of instruction) and is implemented by the means of Internet technologies.

The Department of Pharmacology, Pharmacy Organization and Economics of PetrSU arranges the contact between students and teachers via the digital environment, uses electronic libraries (Student’s Consultant, Consultant Plus, the electronic libraries of the University and the National Library of the Republic of Karelia), and holds online seminars on various medical and pharmaceutical sites and platforms.

Students receive their assignments at home and send teachers their reports and presentations in electronic form. All classes are held following the timetable, study plan, and course schedule. The students are provided with topics they should study, and assignments to complete, schedule of online seminars or lectures, deadlines for tests, review and practical works. Distance education includes such forms of interaction as video seminars, chats with teachers, and online tests. Students work with electronic resources, on personal sites of teachers, and use the system of distance assessment. Grades awarded for completed assignments are logged into the journal.

Daria Varganova, the Associate Professor of the Department of Pharmacology, Pharmacy Organization and Economics, Candidate of Pharmaceutical Sciences, talked to PetrSU press:

“ For me as a teacher it provided a stimulus to improve educational material and assessment means. We are more used to face-to-face interaction with students when you can ask questions and talk to them and thus assess their knowledge. In online studying everything is different and this means we have to develop new forms of tasks. Currently, we send students lectures to study material and assignments to review what they’ve learned. I think that the most efficient task is to give students situational problems, to solve which they will have to delve into the problem, find additional sources, take a creative approach. Distance learning requires students’ involvement in the study process, their motivation. An upside of this study form is that now every student has an opportunity to study in his or her rhythm and mode, so those students who have trouble engaging in studying early in the morning now can comfortably study at times that suit them better. Those students who need more time to tackle a task now can take their time to figure it out without regard to others. Distance learning requires a lot of work, both on the part of a teacher and the part of a student.”

Yulia Matveeva, Associate Professor of the Department, Candidate of Biological Sciences:

“Among the benefits of distance learning, I can name first and foremost the comfort and accessibility, as the study process is not bound by timetable and location. You can study at any time. Every student decides when and how much time will it take him or her to complete an assignment. They can contact teachers via different modes both online and offline. Another benefit is, of course, individual approach.”