Abstract of Dr. Ekaterina Koldunova
Teaching International Relations and History of Asia in Times of Pandemic
Dr. Ekaterina Koldunova
ASEAN Centre, MGIMO University, Vernadskogo Prospect 76, Moscow 119454, Russia
Abstract
The transfer of university classes online due to now quite regularly happening lockdowns has divided the students’ body and academic community into proponents and opponents of online learning according to several lines. One of these lines was about teaching hard sciences, medicine, etc. on the one hand, and humanities, on the other hand. Humanities proved to be much easier adaptable for the online teaching and learning. However, even in this case organization of classes required profound reassessment of their structure and the ways the content was presented, the topics were discussed and the learning outcomes assessed. Based on the experience from the past year of online teaching IR and History of Asia to Russian and international students in the Moscow State Institute of International Relations the proposed presentations is to speak about these three elements: restructuring of the class content, organization of the seminar discussions and assessment in the situation of “new normal” of pandemic. The rationale behind rethinking of these three elements was as follows. Videoconference programs, like Zoom, Google Meet and others, provided the lecturers (ones they got used to these programs’ most general technical toolkit) with the opportunities to practice business-as-usual approach to the lecturing. However, the overall environment (having your students being dispersed all over the country and even the world and connected to the lecturer only by the means of launching or not launching the Zoom or other applications) did not let the lecturers to stick to the old ways anymore. Thus, a variety of interactive methods, including international collaborations, became important (e.g. segmenting the lecture into smaller logical parts with proper video and presentation material, inviting colleagues from other countries to take part in the classes – the case of MGIMO-Thammasat University cooperation will be provided, using interactive tasks organized via Google forms, etc.).
Keywords: International Relations, History, Asia, online teaching, Russia, Thailand
