Developing Students’ Cognitive Abilities in E-Learning Environment

Big challenges of providing continuous educational process under the COVID-19 pandemic are boosting the creation of a new E-learning environment in modern educational establishments. On the one hand, it requires much cognitive effort to cope with new tasks of working in virtual environment, and on the other, it promotes further development of cognitive abilities of all participants in the educational process. Reforms include changes in learning environment (for students), and new approaches to teaching methods (for teaching staff). It is worth mentioning that lately most of the teaching staff have also become ‘students’ while acquiring new skills of working with information technologies in E-learning environment. The current research was held on the basis of two universities, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) and Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI University). The aim of the study is to analyze students’ and educators’ attitude (expectations, readiness, experience obtained) towards the e-learning environment and to identify the essence of cognitive abilities development for students in the format of forced distance learning. The research included 234 respondents (134 from MAI University and 100 from MGIMO University) who were to take part in two questionnaires (one for educators, and the other for students of foreign languages) to get their attitude to the forced substitution of the traditional, in-person, form of education; benefits remote telecommuting classes can offer; virtual learning and educational environment; new skills and abilities e-learning environment require and develop. The research has also proved an increase in digital ‘literacy’ of both educators and students. It presumes that educators have acquired new digital skills and have developed new forms of distance learning and virtual collaboration. As for the students, e-learning has promoted development of their cognitive abilities (information comprehension, procession, content structuring) and new skills of telecommuting, telecommunicating and telepresenting the results of their work. All respondents highlighted that on-line education and collaboration has required psychological adaption and self-discipline. Nevertheless, current situation caused by the pandemic proves that developing cognitive abilities has become a prerequisite for sustainable education. It is necessary to work out scientific tools and procedures to assess the cognitive abilities of students and teaching staff in order to elaborate effective mechanisms of collaboration in virtual environment. The results may assist students, educators, regulators and employers in efficient and fruitful cooperation with IT experts in order to address the current challenges in the sphere of education.