High academic motivation is regarded as a key to a student’s good academic performance and, consequently, a successful future. The spread of online learning not only provided new opportunities for students and educators, but also stimulated interest in the factors that affect academic motivation for this model of education. The situation of spring 2020, when Russian universities switched to remote learning, provided an opportunity to research the relative value of motivation-influencing factors for the students who normally study offline, but unexpectedly found themselves in a new study environment. In early July, 2020, the authors conducted an opinion survey of students (N = 274) from three Russian universities with the following goals: creating a rating of factors that influence academic motivation, obtaining the respondents’ opinions regarding the amount of time spent on studying and its difficulty during lockdown, monitoring changes in motivation after the transition to remote learning. The obtained data show that most respondents rated intrinsic factors as being most important for their academic motivation, however, such extrinsic factors as teachers and their relations with students also make a considerable impact on motivation. Academic motivation is positively affected by the perceived value of new knowledge and skills, by understanding the role of education for future success, and also by material/mo­netary incentives. The most prominent negative factors are a lack of time and absence of a good study environment. Most respondents stated that transition to remote learning made studying harder and more time-consuming. The lockdown is shown to have had a negative effect on motivation for most students, which indicates that extrinsic factors, primarily, the study environment and the smoothness of communication, play a vital role in academic motivation. These results help to gain a better understanding of academic motivation from the students’ perspective, and could be taken into consideration by educators and administrators when making decisions on the study format and the design of offline and online courses.

Today, international academic cooperation of universities is going through a tough period due to political and economic challenges. The authors consider the main causes of this and show how the situation could be improved through the development of local academic programs, such as LEADER Project. This joint educational project, focused on entrepreneurship and management skills, is arranged by Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario (Canada). The program has 11 years of positive experience at Baikal State University in Irkutsk and it has proved to be successful and viable. The article provides analysis of the projects strengths and the main components of its success. Attention is also drawn to the specific features and potential advantages of using the case method as a modern teaching procedure, as well as to the innovative format of the project and its mutually beneficial character. The authors analyze the results of a feedback survey of the participants and instructors in order to find out their takeaways from the project, its possible drawbacks and future development prospects. The key conclusions refer to the importance of retaining international academic contacts.

The authors study the concepts of data protection and freedom of information, which are considered to be the basic concepts of modern information societies. The research is based on the materials of British and American mass media. Language is viewed as integral part of the society, as one of its self-regulation mechanisms; the authors use the integrationist approach to language and the bio-cultural theory of meaning to describe each of the concepts from the standpoint of its value for the society. They also prove that the meaning of these concepts is based on their characteristic as a “valuable resource”, which leads to the co-existence of two opposing trends — the need to protect private life and private information on the one hand, and the necessity of sharing different, including private, information to reach the socially approved goals on the other hand. The first trend is manifested through the concept of privacy, while the second describes the availability of data and information. The authors pay special attention to the analysis of social changes that lead to a new balance of data protection / freedom of information, to the necessity of finding a new equilibrium point. They study the rapid growth of various social networking sites and messengers that facilitate the emergence and dissemination of fake news, while this news — data and information — lose their characteristic of a “valuable resource” since they are totally or partially false. Social networking sites could also make personal information widely available or collect user information that is then transferred to a third party. The unacceptability of such practices in the eyes of the society is examined using the example of a recent scandal involving Facebook and Data Analytica. The authors come to the conclusion that the concepts of data protection and freedom of information reflect the essence of a regulatory social mechanism that coordinates interactions between the person and society in the new information age.