CC BY
35
ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКОЕ ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ
УДК 614.2+021.66 44.03.01 Педагогическое образование
DOI: 10.37903/vsgma.2021.4.29
COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF THE USE OF GOOGLE SERVICES AND THE WEBINAR.RU PLATFORM IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS AT THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTHCARE
Klykov A.I., Dekhnich S.N., Kosareva E.A., Morozova A.S.
Smolensk State Medical University, 28, Krupskoj St., 214019, Smolensk, Russia
Abstract
Objective. To give a comparative assessment of the use of Google services and the platform Webinar.ru when delivering a lecture course on the discipline "Public health and healthcare, non-infectious epidemiology" for students of the Faculty of Foreign students training of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation
Methodology. The study uses the method of expert assessments of the technical and organizational capabilities of using Google services and the platform Webinar.ru to deliver a full lecture course in the amount of 80 academic hours on the discipline "Public health and healthcare, non-infectious epidemiology" for students of the Faculty of foreign students training during 2020 - 2021 at the Department of Public Health and Healthcare.
Results. According to the provided opportunities (accounting for lecture attendance, additional lecturer tools, speaker's capabilities in the process of lecturing, integration into corporate university services) application of the platform Webinar.ru provides better quality lectures compared to Google services.
Conclusion. Service Webinar.ru according to its technical and organizational criteria, is more optimal in delivering lectures for the educational process on the discipline Public health and healthcare, non-infectious epidemiology for foreign students.
Keywords: distance learning, foreign students, public health and healthcare
СРАВНИТЕЛЬНАЯ ОЦЕНКА ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ СЕРВИСОВ GOOGLE И ПЛАТФОРМЫ WEBINAR.RU В ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОМ ПРОЦЕССЕ НА КАФЕДРЕ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОГО ЗДОРОВЬЯ И ЗДРАВООХРАНЕНИЯ
Клыков А.И., Дехнич С.Н., Косарева Е.А., Морозова А.С.
Смоленский государственный медицинский университет, Россия, 214019, Смоленск, ул. Крупской, 28 Резюме
Цель. Дать сравнительную оценку применения сервисов Google и платформы Webinar.ru при проведении лекционного курса по дисциплине «Общественное здоровье и здравоохранение, неинфекционная эпидемиология» у студентов факультета иностранных учащихся ФГБОУ ВО «Смоленский государственный медицинский университет» Минздрава России
Методика. В исследовании применен метод экспертных оценок технических и организационных возможностей применения сервисов Google и платформы Webinar.ru для проведения полного лекционного курса в объеме 80 академических часов по дисциплине «Общественное здоровье и здравоохранение, неинфекционная эпидемиология» у студентов факультета иностранных учащихся в течение 2020-2021 гг. на кафедре общественного здоровья и здравоохранения.
Результаты. По предоставляемым возможностям (учет посещаемости лекций, дополнительные инструменты лектора, возможности докладчика в процессе чтения лекций, интеграция в корпоративные сервисы ВУЗа) применение платформы Webinar.ru обеспечивает более качественное проведение лекций по сравнению с сервисами Google.
Заключение. Сервис Webinar.ru по своим техническим и организационным критериям является более оптимальным в проведении лекций образовательного процесса по дисциплине «Общественное здоровье и здравоохранение, неинфекционная эпидемиология» у иностранных учащихся.
Ключевые слова: дистанционное обучение, иностранные учащиеся, общественное здоровье и здравоохранение
Introduction
Currently, the education system of Russia and the whole world is facing new challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the need for specialists who will be able to quickly adapt to the new conditions of their chosen profession, have led to changes in the field of higher education.
Over the past decades, a new policy in the field of higher education has been introduced in the countries of the European Union, which is able to provide an answer to these challenges - the Bologna Process.
The main provisions of the Bologna Declaration are as follows: the credit system use; transition to a multi-level education system (bachelor's and master's degrees); social support for low-income students; introduction of an uninterrupted learning system; unification of the content of education; introduction of nonlinear trajectories of students' learning; introduction of permanent academic ratings of students and teachers; using a competency-based approach; wide introduction of distance learning into the educational process, wide application of information technologies at all levels of education; development and implementation of innovations in the educational process [1].
Let's focus only on one of the issues in higher education, namely distance education. Various aspects of this issue are reflected in the latest government documents, including the project "Education - 20192024", the project "Science and Universities - 2021-2030".
Therefore, the use of innovative and distance learning technologies in higher education is becoming increasingly important. At the same time, it is important to take into account the satisfaction of students with the distance format in the educational process [2]. It is also advisable to conduct an expert assessment by teachers of the quality of the distance platforms used in the implementation of the discipline's curriculum.
The aim of the article is to give a comparative assessment of the use of Google services and the platform Webinar.ru when delivering the lecture course on the discipline "Public health and healthcare, noninfectious epidemiology" for students of the Faculty of foreign students of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.
Methodology
The particular relevance in the conditions of distance learning is the delivering of a lecture course, without providing of educational material until the semester finishes. There are various methods of providing students with lecture material: by E-mail, using messengers (Skype, WhatsApp), "cloud" file archives, etc. However, the best option, in our opinion, is to provide lectures in the format of direct remote communication - webinars and online conferences. Webinar is a virtual meeting of the presenter (presenters) and participants of the event who listen to the speech and watch the actions of the speakers on their computer screens or mobile devices. In the course of training, we abandoned the format of an online conference. A distinctive feature of a webinar from an online conference is that there is a limited number of speakers (speakers): most often 1 or 2. The other participants do not have the right to speak.
Two platforms were used for lectures (webinars) - Google services and the platform Webinar.ru [2-4].
The results of the study and their discussion
The lecture courses on the discipline Public Health and Healthcare, non-infectious epidemiology using Google services was held at the Department of Public Health and Healthcare in the fall semester of 2020 for 4th year students of the Faculty of Foreign Students. In total, 10 lectures were delivered for 267 students of two streams, i.e. a full lecture course of the fall semester (40 hours). The choice of this system was due to the fact that Google services are very common in India, which was noted in the unofficial recommendation of the Indian representative.
The free version of Google services was used for lectures, in particular, Google Meet. Google Meet is a platform for group video communication from Google and part of its services. It exists in a free and commercial version (as part of the Google Workspace).
Features of the free version of Google Meet: unlimited video meetings in high quality. At the time of the lecture course (September 2020), Google temporarily removed the 60-minute limit for the free version; the ability to organize an urgent video meeting without planning or using a scheduler; secure video communication - encryption during data transmission and proactive technologies of ensuring security and confidentiality; convenient access to the video meeting via an invitation link - both from a computer and through the Google Meet application for smartphones; the ability to share an image from the device screen to demonstrate documents, presentations and other content; various languages interface.
At the same time, the free version of Google Meet has some restrictions: the number of participants is no more than 100 people; no video meeting recording function; users who do not use a Google account cannot join a video meeting.
When delivering lectures using this platform, event planning was carried out at the first stage. The Google Calendar service was used for this. First, a separate calendar of events was created. After, this calendar was made available and students were provided with a link to access and synchronize with the calendar. At the next stage, lectures were scheduled in the calendar according to the schedule. At the same time, when planning, the parameters of connecting to Google Meet for each scheduled lecture are immediately entered directly into the calendar, which becomes available to students.
The connection to the video meeting started 15 minutes before the start of the lecture according to the schedule, in order to give everyone the technical opportunity to join. One of the functions of Google Meet is to demonstrate the speaker's desktop. When lecturing, this function was used to show the slides of the lecturer's presentation directly. It should be noted that the image and speech quality are quite good during the lectures.
Despite the advantages described above (integration with the scheduler, good quality of video and audio communication, stable operation on various devices), in our opinion, the free version of Google Meet has a number of disadvantages when used for lectures.
Firstly, only users with a Google account can connect to the video meeting. However, almost all foreign students had such accounts. A more serious drawback is the limitation of the number of simultaneous connections to the lecture to 100 people and the duration of the meeting to 60 minutes. The second restriction was removed by Google during the lecture period, but the limit of lecture participants remained. Therefore, after the lecture, we had to provide its materials to students in the form of a pdf file in Google Calendar [4].
The same disadvantage, from our point of view, is the approval of the connection of each newly joined listener. When connecting to a video meeting, the lecturer (administrator) must give permission to each new listener to join the lecture. And if it does not interfere before the lecture, then after the lecture starts, it distracts from the lecture. At the same time, there is no function to automatically turn off the microphone when connected to a video meeting, as well as blocking the microphone from being turned on again after it is turned off by the administrator. Sometimes it was necessary to turn off the microphones of some students, interfering with lectures, personally. However, such cases, it should be noted, were extremely rare.
Another disadvantage of Google Meet is the lack of the ability to make a list of those present at the lecture. Therefore, in order to record the presence of students at the lecture, it was necessary to periodically take screenshots of the screen with a list of those who connected. Despite the shortcomings noted, in our opinion, the experience of lecturing using Google services can be considered successful [35].
A lecture course using the Webinar.ru service was held in the autumn semester of 2021 for 348 4th year students of the Faculty of Foreign Students. In total, 10 lectures were delivered for students of two streams, i.e. a full lecture course of the fall semester (40 hours).
The service was used with a corporate tariff paid by the university. It should be noted that the range of tariffs for any segment of the platform is quite wide. In addition, various options are available for connection (branding, auto-seminars, etc.).
Features of the used Webinar.ru version: unlimited webinars with customizable quality. The duration of the webinar is practically unlimited by the system; the number of simultaneous participants is up to 1000 people. The quality of audio and video streams is adjusted depending on the width of the data channel; the ability to organize a video meeting using the scheduler; secure video communication - encryption during data transmission; convenient access to the video meeting by invitation link and password, or by pre-registration both from a computer and through the "My Webinar" application for smartphones; the ability to share an image from the device screen, special built-in tools for displaying images, presentations and videos; ability to transfer files to listeners and maintain a file archive; monitoring the presence of listeners
at the computer during the event; recording of the event with the possibility of providing access to the recording; detailed webinar statistics; interface in various languages [9].
A feature of the platform is the absence of the possibility of instant events creation. All webinars should be scheduled using the service's calendar planner. When planning, the date, time and duration of the lecture were determined (according to the schedule) [7, 8]. To connect to the lecture, the user must know the invitation link and password. For the convenience of students of the Faculty of Foreign Students, invitation links and passwords were published in a specially created Telegram messenger channel.
The connection to the video meeting began 15 minutes before the start time of the lecture, specified in the schedule, in order to give everyone the technical opportunity to join. When connecting in the welcome window of the system, the student must specify his full name and group. If the data was incorrectly specified, a remark was made and the user was forcibly disconnected to reconnect with the correct data. When connected, the microphones of all users (except the lecturer) were automatically turned off without the possibility of its turn on by students. At the end of the lecture, it was possible, if desired, to turn on the students' microphones and ask a question to the lecturer.
One of the functions of Webinar.ru is a demonstration of the speaker's desktop. When lecturing, this function was used to show the slides of the lecturer's presentation directly, while the quality of image and speech transmission during lecturing was very good. The service allows us to get fairly detailed statistics of online events in the form of pdf and Excel files. This was used to account for the attendance of lectures by students [8].
Conclusions
Comparing both used services, Google Meet and Webinar.ru it should be noted that the functionality of Google Meet is full only when it is used together with other Google services: Calendar, Disk, Documents, etc. At the same time, these services are focused more on the corporate segment with a closed structure. It should also be taken into account that there are limitations of the free version of the service.
Thus, the service Webinar.ru from our point of view, is one of the best solutions for online lectures delivered for students of various faculties. At the same time, it should be noted that there are both the possibilities for its integration into corporate information systems of universities, and the possibility of using it as an independent platform, which allows us to optimally reveal all its capabilities.
Литература (References)
1. Bologna Process: basic materials / comp. Burtsev A.K., Zvonova V.A.; translated from the English by A.K. Burtsev. - M.: Finance and Statistics, 2006. - 89 p.
2. Dekhnich S.N., Klykov A.I., Vdovina Ya.K. et al. Satisfaction of students of medical and pediatric faculties with the organization of distance learning at the Department of Public Health and Healthcare / Collection of scientific materials of the VII International scientific and practical Conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the discipline "Social hygiene" (December 24, 2020, Smolensk). - Kirov, 2021. - P. 51-37 // URL: https://mcito.ru/publishing/epub/collections ?view=348 (accessed: 11/02/2021)
3. Google disk - cloud storage for professional and personal purposes // URL: https://www.google.com/drive (accessed: 10/30/2021)
4. Google Calendar // URL: https://accounts.google.com (accessed: 10/30/2021)
5. Google Meet // URL: https://apps.google.com/meet (accessed: 10/30/2021)
6. How to use the screen demonstration function at a webinar // URL: https://webinar.ru/blog/kak-ispolzovat-funkciyu-demonstracii-ehkrana-na-vebinare (accessed: 11/05/2021)
7. Technical recommendations for the hosts and viewers of the webinar // URL: https://webinar.ru/blog/ technicheskie_rekomendacii_dlya_uchastnilov_i_spikerov_webinara (accessed: 11/06/2021)
8. Webinar platform Webinar .ru // URL: https://webinar.ru (accessed: 10/30/2021)
Информация об авторах
Клыков Алексей Игоревич - кандидат медицинских наук, доцент кафедры общественного здоровья и организации здравоохранения ФГБОУ ВО «Смоленский государственный медицинский университет» Минздрава России. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Дехнич Светлана Николаевна - кандидат медицинских наук, доцент, заведующая кафедрой общественного здоровья и организации здравоохранения ФГБОУ ВО «Смоленский государственный медицинский университет» Минздрава России. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Косарева Елена Анатольевна - кандидат медицинских наук, старший преподаватель кафедры общественного здоровья и организации здравоохранения ФГБОУ ВО «Смоленский государственный медицинский университет» Минздрава России. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Морозова Анастасия Сергеенкова - старший преподаватель кафедры общественного здоровья и организации здравоохранения ФГБОУ ВО «Смоленский государственный медицинский университет» Минздрава России. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Information about the authors
Klykov Alexey Igorevich - candidate of Medical Sciences, associate professor of the Department of Public Health and Healthcare of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Russia. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Svetlana Nikolaevna Dehnich - candidate of Medical Sciences, associate professor, Head of the Department of Public Health and Healthcare of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Russia. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Kosareva Elena Anatolyevna - candidate of Medical Sciences, senior lecturer of the Department of Public Health and Healthcare of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Russia. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Anastasia Sergeevna Morozova - senior lecturer of the Department of Public Health and Healthcare of the Smolensk State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Russia. E-mail: oz-sgma@mail.ru
Конфликт интересов: авторы заявляют об отсутствии конфликта интересов.
