Online Format of Extracurricular Education: a New Reality of Project-Based Education for Senior High School Students

Purpose of the study. The paper presents data and analyzes the practice of transferring a major All-Russian event in the system of extracurricular education – the Russian National Junior Water Competition – to a distance format due to the coronavirus pandemic. The system of extracurricular education for senior high school students formed within the framework of the Water Competition for the adaptation of school graduates to the technological and communication realities of “adult life” combines project-based training with the format of a competitive component. As part of the preparation and implementation of research projects, a student receives methodological, organizational and educational support from teachers and consultants from universities and academic institutions, attends special seminars, trainings and master classes on project activities. The system has been developing using the model of cooperation in the educational sphere “NPO-state-business” since 2003, and over these years, 32 thousand schoolchildren from all regions have completed and submitted 23 thousand research and applied projects to solve environmental problems. The winners of the regional stages take part in the All-Russian final held annually in Moscow. The winner of the final represents the country at the international Stockholm competition. 2020 events coincided with the coronavirus epidemic. It was necessary to transfer the offline final to online within a month and ensure information interaction between all participants so that the online event was a complete analogue of the offline final. Materials and methods. The transferring of traditional public events of the final into a remote format was carried out using a set of organizational measures and information technologies according to the following algorithm: the choice of technologies for videoconference and broadcasting, work with the website, training and testing of the technical capabilities of participants, work on synchronization, support and assistance to participants with a final questionnaire. Results. The obvious advantage of the online format is a significant expansion of the external audience and an exponential growth of the information footprint: during the month, more than 400 publications were posted on the Internet; the number of views was 300 thousand. The ER (Engagement Rate) ratio – an indicator of the audience’s reaction to the publication, has shown a rapid increase in comparison with previous years. The questioning of the participants made it possible to understand the mood and assessment of the events by the target audiences. The number of viewers of each broadcast event ranged from 2 to 5-6 thousand people. The online final allowed to involve in the general system of adaptation training, in addition to schoolchildren, teachers and regional partners, an interested audience, while 77% of respondents supported the full-time final, 23% – remote, noting that the organizers managed to preserve the emotional atmosphere of the final events. Conclusion. In general, the system of extracurricular education for schoolchildren, combined with a competitive component, turned out to be capable of prompt reformatting while maintaining the level and quality of events in the face of new challenges. In the process of transferring the final events of the cycle of additional adaptation education, combined with the All-Russian competition of projects for senior high school students to the remote mode, the possibility of online implementation of almost all types of interaction with the target audience – junior participants, including master classes, general discussions and personal consultations and the competitive component is shown. The possibility of using the remote format for the implementation of the organizational and information infrastructure, the operational correction of educational adaptation programs following the spread of innovative technologies that are gaining priority importance for the modern period of socio-economic development is demonstrated. At the same time, the entire volume of training cannot be reduced to formalized forms without the direct presence of teachers and consultants in the creative design process. Direct communication becomes especially relevant at the beginning of the journey when choosing a topic for training and a general understanding of environmental and related problems. It is also obvious that the effectiveness of the remote format is significantly increased for a prepared audience of participants: those who have completed additional training offline with the project development itself.