The Future of Education

Science and education at the present stage of development, like society as a whole, undergo peculiar modifications. The protracted crisis associated with the epidemic situation in Russia and in the world sharply exacerbated the problems of educating the new generation. Science is obliged to offer particularly balanced rational and pragmatic approaches to address the most urgent practical issues, in particular, the education of a student nowadays. From this angle, the present paper proposes relevant theoretical models for studying the concept of distance education, its place, and its role in the modern scientific community. A program has been developed, taking into account the latest global trends in the theory and practice of distance learning. It is based on new concepts, categories that have emerged in modern science. The information material selected for the study is adapted to the requirements and principles of formative training. The goal of any training course is the transfer of knowledge and practical experience gained to future specialists, the formation of skills necessary to achieve efficiency in the implementation of tasks in the upcoming process of professional activity. The proposed study in the field of distance learning is designed to lay the foundations of critical thinking among students, to form their ability to comprehend the surrounding reality, the skills to adequately make the most effective decisions under the principles of learning. Its subject is the disclosure of the general content of the theory and methodology of distance learning. The course program takes into account the previous training of students and provides the basis for the subsequent deepening of knowledge, abilities, and value orientations. The theoretical and practical blocks of classes are designed to stimulate an independent search for the missing students' knowledge, building on the information received and the practical experience gained at the lectures and seminars of the course within the framework of the online platform. The distribution of the number of hours is dynamic, but conventional, giving the teacher the freedom to choose: either to devote more or less attention and time to specific topics based on the real needs of the students and his/her scientific preferences. An essential condition of the course is the following aspects: the formation of a student as an independently thinking and active person, capable of exhibiting non-standard thinking when organizing a distance learning process in a higher educational institution.