Abstract: This article is devoted to the study of modern possibilities to increase the efficiency of moral and ethical upbringing of students in higher educational institutions. One of such possibilities is motivating them to use new digital technologies in a correct and an ecological way. Proper upbringing of students at higher education institutions and involving them in extracurricular activities contributes to their ethical and moral education and creative development, which helps to achieve the global goals of sustainable development of society (i.e. improving human living conditions and minimizing the negative impact on the environment). In this regard, the authors consider that it is necessary for teachers of higher education institutions to study in more detail the possibilities of new digital and educational technologies precisely considering the principles of environmental friendliness and ethical standards of communication. The authors conduct a complex analysis, including the following methods: theoretical analysis of scientific literature, an anonymous survey of 194 junior full-time students and 48 lecturers and monitoring of the application of digital technologies in different events, held in the Volgograd Institute of Management. The analysis of modern scientific literature on pedagogy and pedagogical psychology, as well as the results of the survey, allowed the authors to draw the following conclusions. The use of new digital technologies and tools, such as smartphones and their apps, videoconferencing services, video recording and presentation development programmes, undoubtedly helps to make the educational and upbringing process easier. All these technical means make the process of creation accessible, attractive, exciting, and involve more students in extracurricular activities. The exact ways of developing efficient and safe online communication during the extracurricular activities are still not yet sufficiently discussed by the methodologists and educators, that’s why this research is to be further continued within another higher educational institutions.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the study of modern popular science literature in order to identify some lexical and stylistic features, as well as to figure out the specificity of the methodology of nowadays scientific and popular information presentation. The authors pay special attention to studying of undeclared implicit discursive elements of popular science texts. Printed versions of books with a total volume of 196,6 conventional printing sheets serve as a material of the study. The analysis of the material showed that the authors of popular science books try to increase the degree of trust of the audience in a variety of ways, for example, by making the process of communication with the reader more intimate, by demonstrating the proximity to official academic community and by positioning the produced text as scientifically significant. One of the most typical phenomena that has been noted in the popular science texts is making some lexical units (including terms) hypersubjective in relation to the context (and their future use in a variety of situations) together with the creation of implicit ideological pressure, as well as with the persistent demonstration of the universality of these lexical units. In all the texts that have been analysed, the unobvious discourse-forming telelogy is noted, which is a tool for soft promotion of meaning-forming and partly ideologically conditioned ways of understanding various facts. Typical of the analysed popular science literature is the presence of reduced argumentation with unjustified usage of the third-party axiomatics and the extension of the argumentation base to the interdisciplinary junction. The use of primitivized argumentation targeted for a dilettante philistine level is noted. It is not uncommon to omit the existing scientific and relevant links and patterns, or to interpret them in a way that does not contradict the information certainty projected in the text. It is also possible to note a distracting informational redundancy, which the authors of the article consider as one of the ways of splitting the text, deliberately created by the addressee of the text.

Abstract: The relevance of the article is determined by the need to analyze the changes that occurred in higher education institutions in the area of the use of digital technology during and after the pandemic. Within the framework of this research, we conducted a content-analysis of the websites and curricula of Volgograd higher education institutions and a questionnaire survey of students in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the use of digital technology and e-learning in the modern context. Digitalization came into the process of the management of higher education institutions long ago, however, rapid changes in e-learning have occurred in the last two years, which was confirmed in the results of our study. 70-80% of students' independent work was transferred to electronic form, the classroom workload is replaced with online lessons, the teaching methods change: the use of mixed learning as well as blended and flipped learning increases. The results of the study make us think about the excessive enthusiasm for e-learning, possibilities and risks of its use. Digital education brings significant changes in the role of professors and students in the process of learning, which requires appropriate adaptation and causes changes in the management of the organizations and the introduction of new actors in the educational process. At the institutional level, our conclusions indicate the need to support the academic staff in the area of methodological and technical assistance since the process of digital transformation of higher education institutions is irreversible and its intensiveness continues to grow.