Digital education: the transition online German universities during the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of human life and has had a huge impact on higher education and university governance. The purpose of this research is to analyze the experience of higher education digitalizing in Germany during the COVID-19 crisis. Over the past years, the German federal government has supported the initiative for the transition to a digital society in which the role of digital technologies is important, including education. However, for a number of reasons analyzed in the paper German universities were not ready for the transition to digital format, at the initial stage transferring classroom lessons for the summer semester. The academic community was divided into two camps - those who insisted on postponing classes and those who tried to organize the digital learning process. Members of the German Rectors' Conference held on May 7, 2020, also insist that it is impossible to completely replace classroom activities with digital tools. As studies show, the concepts of “distance learning” and “online learning” are often being replaced, which leads to the temptation to use hastily completed training courses in the future. The paper analyzes the studies of authors from Germany on distance learning in quarantine, introduces into scientific circulation previously untranslated academic publications, presents the idea of “data economy”, highlights and describes the main difficulties in the transition of German universities to a digital format, and formulates practical recommendations that can be used by Russian universities.