Oksana M. Gushchina

The authors discuss the urgent problem of assessing the quality of distance and online education as a new format of interaction between participants of the educational process. The assessment of the quality of distance learning in the framework of the study implies the definition of the characteristics of educational activities organization in the format of online provision of educational services, which is considered as an integral indicator of objective data of the education subject (educational achievements received) and integrated subjective data according to the analysis of opinions and judgments of participants in the educational process based on a digital search for relevant messages. The purpose of the article is to substantiate a methodological approach to the implementation of a digital search for the target audience with further extraction of relevant messages for the formation of a data sample. Students and teachers of higher educational institutions who publish various posts on the Internet on the problems of higher education, distance or online education and education in a pandemic are the target audience for this study. Analysis of the data obtained as a result of digital search showed that the topic of education in communities was not popular before the transition to distance learning, however, with the compulsory mass transition to online learning, it became much more often discussed in the communities of both teachers and students. In addition, during the announcement of most Russian universities about the transition to total distance learning, there is an increase in publication activity in relevant communities. In general, organizational messages are more common for universities, the most resonant is the topic of the lack of clear information about the learning process. The assessment of the quality of distance education allows us to display the degree of compliance of the educational results achieved with the expectations of the subjects of education, social needs and regulatory requirements. In addition, the search methodology found in the course of the study, which includes the selection of methods, methods and strategies for information retrieval of the relevant selection of the required data, will allow to consistently form a set of indicators for a comprehensive assessment of the quality of education in future.