Ekaterina Lezhneva’s research while affiliated with Bauman Moscow State Technical University and other places

The article considers implementation of the state strategy for digital transformation of the Russian education, in particular, the integration of digital reading in the educational space of technical universities. It determines the ongoing scientific discussions about digitalization and its impact on such cognitive processes as perception, interpretation, and assimilation of information by university students. Reading is fundamental to learning and education. Therefore, it is relevant to analyze digital reading in the academic environment including its learning potential, as well as advantages and disadvantages. Although many domestic and foreign authors have written about digital reading, there is a lack of empirical studies analyzing the impact of modern technologies on readers’ perceptions of digital resources. Our article aims to fill this gap. The goal is to determine the technical university students’ attitudes towards digital reading, its advantages and disadvantages. We also identify methods for enhancing the use of digital reading in the university’s educational environment. Our pedagogical research employs such empirical methods as questionnaires, pedagogical observation, and interviews in the form of free frontal discussion. Quantitative and statistical analyses are used to process and interpret the obtained data. The novelty consists in digital reading as a new educational technology and the readers’ attitude towards it. The study involves 1st to 3rd year students from Bauman Moscow State Technical University (n = 222). The data obtained do not only identify the students’ assessments of the digital integration in the Russian higher education, but also outlines ways to optimize the use of digital technologies in the educational process. The study shows that the shift from traditional print media to digital reading has both advantages and disadvantages. It requires students to communicate with interactive multimodal texts on digital media, which can affect their cognitive, emotional, volitional, and physical development. This places special demands on the competence of university teachers.

The academic identity is in the focus of the paper. The study is relevant as Academic Identity represented in English determines a young scolar`s entering the global academic community, acknowledgement by the dicourse community and science ambition realisation. The paper is aimed at analising lingvo-didactic ponential of revising academic text in English as an efficient methodological technique in enhancing English proficiency of research students; the way revising facilitates Academic Identity construction. The aim involves the following objectives: (1) considering various viewponts of both foreign and Russian scientists on the notion and major components of Academic Identity, our fomulating the definition of Academic Identity; (2) revealing the lingvotextual peculiarities of a scientific paper which influence Academic Identity construction, analising their potential of representing author and his/her academic status; (3) discussing methodological relevance of using English academic text revising as an efficient methodological technique in enhancing English proficiency of research students and developing Academic Identity; (4) hypothesis testing on the co-working academic case-studies of university teachers and research students at BMSTU; (5) interpreting the obtained results in terms of their verification and relevance in reaching the goal. The authors employ empirical techniques of pedagogical observation, quantitative and qualitative (discourse-interpretation) analyses. The novelty and theoretical value of the study are determined by the fact that it has proved the possibility of constructing Academic Identity at the International level as a holistic structural dynamic process of developing identity by mastering academic communication language characterised by its discourse functional peculiarities. It has been established that Academic Identity of research students may be nurtured during writing academic texts by applying structural-linguistic norms of academic writing, author's self-identification by means of linguistic and text markers, revising texts and manipulating reasonable language resources to vary the degree the author and his vewpoint are visible in a scientific paper. The practical value lies in its relevance for successful Academic Identity constructing of young scholars by English resourse, for research students' awareness at technical higher education institutions how revising academic texts influences Academic Identity degree. Therefore, the co-working of university teachers and research students on revising their scientific papers facilitates mastering academic discourse knowledge while enhancing Academic English proficiency, self-confidence and self-consistency, i.e. constructing Academic Identity.