TEACHING RUSSIAN AT THE US UNIVERSITIES IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

When the COVID-19 global pandemic impacted the United States, along with the rest of the world, DLIFLC as well as most of the US universities urgently switched to online teaching to prevent the spread of coronavirus among students and faculty. At this time of the global crisis, Continuing Education Distance Learning program (CE-DL) at DLIFLC has been providing flexible and effective student-centered post-basic Russian as a foreign language instruction via technology-mediated learner-management systems, specifically Adobe Connect and Microsoft Teams. This article provides a theoretical framework for virtual or e-learning foreign language teaching methods and approaches, including the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), a theoretical framework built on Lee Shulman’s (1986) construct of “pedagogical content knowledge” (PCK) to include technology as well as the main characteristics of three basic e-learning environments: virtual, mobile, and blended. Virtual learning environment is operationalized as a range of web-based applications that provide foreign language teachers and learners with information, tools, and resources to support and enhance foreign language teaching while blended learning is operationalized as an approach to foreign language teaching and learning that combines online educational materials and opportunities for interaction online with off-line methods and techniques rooted in face-to-face classroom teaching. The article focuses on blended learning environments which include synchronous and asynchronous instruction for both synchronous class time and asynchronous individual or group study sessions as well as the ways of integrating mobile learning environments for students and instructors to ensure that the learning process goes uninterrupted and smooth regardless of the physical location of the instructor or the students.  This article serves as a starting point for the succeeding presentations on virtual cultural immersion, evaluation and assessment, and course materials with the focus on online interaction and collaboration, as well as the use of the cutting-edge mobile technology.

Keywords: blended teaching and learning, mobile learning, virtual learning, synchronous, asynchronous teaching and learning