The Ethics of the Virtual Educational Environment, New Meanings

Introduction. The purpose of this study is to analyze the ethical and linguo-didactic aspects of the virtual educational space of higher education. The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a catalyst for the transition of education to an online format. Of course, most educational institutions and teachers were forced to quickly adapt the methods and forms of online organization of the educational process. The issue of online education has long been considered from the scientific and practical sides, but such a quick and forced transition to online revealed a number of problems and features of online communication. One of the most significant is the problem of the ethics of online communication in education.Methodology and sources. The theoretical base of the study is represented by the works of Russian and foreign authors in the field of pedagogy of the Higher School (I.V. Robert, I.P. Kuzheleva-Sagan), the theory of generations (N. Howe and W. Strauss, D. and I. Stillman, Shamis) and intercultural communications (G. Hoftede).The empirical base of the study was data obtained during interviews with teachers (23) and students (27) of a higher school (semi-structured, random sample), analysis of the content of educational chats and visual analysis of student avatars (625) used in Zoom.Results and discussion. The article outlines the directions of research into the problems of ethics in the process of online education. On the basis of empirical data, the authors record the transfer of an informal style of communication into the format of educational communication with a teacher, which is spontaneously emotional in nature. The authors make the assumption that the regulation of communication processes had an optional and often non-mandatory format. Particular attention is paid to the understanding and perception of the ethical norms of communication by representatives of different generations.Conclusion. The synchronous format of educational communication in the online format has other syntactic, semantic and stylistic features that differ from the previously generally accepted academic language. In the future, this issue requires a comprehensive consideration not only from the communication and ethical side, but also from the point of view of legal and information security. It is necessary to form ethical standards for online teaching.