Attitudes of Russian university academic staff to forced distant

It is time to reflect on the experience of implementing educational programs by Russian universities in forced distant to identify the best practices, to outline the ways to transform tertiary education system, to optimize the work of academic staff, and to reduce the negative impact on physical health of participants of the educational process. In academic discourse on this topic, the voices of managerial personnel in the field of higher education are most often heard, but it is necessary to give the floor the participants of the educational process, namely, academic staff. The article describes the “force majeure” experience of the university of the 5-100 program in the implementation of educational programs in conditions of forced distant. The purpose of the article is to identify the attitudes of university teachers to the educational activities in conditions of forced transition to training using distant technologies, to analyze the response of teachers to the new format of the educational process. The questionnaire of 63 teachers of the Department of Foreign Languages of South Ural State University revealed that that the key issues are the time spent in front of the computer screen, increased bureaucracy that deteriorates physical health, low ICT competence of academic staff, while the main positive results are the fast and furious professional development in the field of ICT use, increased confidence in the use of online educational services, the possibility of individualizing the educational process, independence from the technical equipment of the university audience. Based on the analysis of the experience of the academic staff of the Russian university and the data of analytical reports of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, the author offers a number of recommendations that will help optimize the academic staff work in emergency situations.