Higher education has undergone a dramatic transformation during 2020 – 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic put forward a number of new requirements and demanded alternative mechanisms necessary for the life and work of universities. The experience has shown that distance learning format is becoming the most effective and relevant one. In such conditions, one of the crucial tasks of teacher education is the development of a creative, responsible, independent personality. The purpose of the research is to study the level of student teachers’ creative activity during the COVID-19 pandemic and justify the need to introduce the model of creative activity enhancement in distance learning format. The given research is a pilot experiment of Kazan Federal University and Vyatka State University (Russia) to reveal the components of student teachers’ creative activity, to develop criteria for assessing their creative activity; to identify the problems and challenges student teachers face when studying in a distance learning format; to propose ways to increase students’ creative potential by means of active methods and techniques through distance learning technologies at the Microsoft Teams platform. The authors consider the use of active teaching strategies will help focus on the inclusion of students in specially organized, increasingly complex educational online activities that ensure the development of creative abilities and personality traits: creative motivation, curiosity, desire to fantasize, divergent thinking, sensitivity to problems, ingenuity.

creativity, creative skills, creative activity, creative potential, distance learning, University students, active teaching strategies.