Psychological Groundings for the Development of Digital Educational Resources

Many leading educational institutions in Russia, including Kazan Federal University develop and implement digital educational resources for different courses. However, Janelli points out that so far there is no unified theory of E-learning. The study aims at elucidating universal psychological patterns that may be used in developing digital educational resources for different psychological and educational (pedagogical) disciplines and at working out recommendations basing on the revealed patterns. Theoretical analysis of psychological views on digital educational resources and studies that assess their effectiveness was the main research methodology. Theoretical research resulted in a set of revealed psychological patterns and recommendations concerning the development of successful digital educational resources. In particular, it was concluded that 1) educational resources following on from behavioral and constructivist theories are more efficient than those based on cognitive ideas; 2) the most useful educational tasks are designed to be done by students independently (by themselves) on the basis of the information acquired in the course; 3) a digital educational resource is more effective if students are informed about instruments that may help them in their studies; 4) a digital educational resource is more effective if the author uses special strategies to communicate with students, such as FAQ or "Ask your teacher" sections. Thus, the following techniques are used to improve the performance of the designed digital educational resources: meta-information about the course and its specifics, special communicational strategies aimed at getting good feed-back from the students, various ways of data presentation (written information, visual image, teacher's video-explanations of storytelling), and tasks for self-tuition based on the information acquired in the course