The analysis of university teachers’ readiness to implement digital technologies in the educational process (based on a survey of the teaching staff of Foreign Languages Department)

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study the teaching staff opinion on the use of digital technologies in the process of teaching foreign languages at a technical university. In the context of education transformation the question of finding and applying new interactive learning technologies becomes especially relevant. The teachers of Foreign Languages Department at Rostov State University pay great attention to this problem. The use of modern mobile applications in foreign language classes for teaching various types of speech activity shows positive results. In particular, the Mind Maps technology has been tested by us in class while teaching lexical topics corresponding to the steering documents of specialties. Its use in the educational process facilitates the perception and memorization of lexical material by students, promotes the development of speech skills, and makes the learning process exciting. It was found that in the course of working on the creation of Mind Maps, students with a high level of digital skills are more successful in overcoming the language barrier, striving to expand the scope and diversify the structure of Mind Maps. The results of a survey of teachers on the effectiveness of using this method in teaching foreign languages as well as the readiness to use digital techniques while working with students are presented. The positive and negative aspects of introducing digital methods into the educational process, the interest of senior teachers to use modern technologies and their active integration into the learning process are revealed. The results can be applied by university professors and school teachers in the process of teaching foreign languages and other courses. The research methods were the method of static description of the material, polling, analysis, comparison and generalization of scientific information.