Control for Mooc

On the Russian National Platform of Open Education

In April, the Ministry of Education and Science announced that the national online education platform will begin to work less than six months later. At the same time, courses from it will be counted under the main educational programs at all Russian universities. The expert of the editainme magazine Alexei Morozov learned from the leadership of eight universities involved in creating a platform, as the future of Russian education will change .

“The task is ambitious - to get to the level of platforms such as Coursera and EDX, to form a brand recognizable on the world arena, further distributing not only courses in Russian, but also multi -language content,” explains the University of ITMO Vladimir Vasiliev . “Students themselves will be able to choose - in which university they will study this or that course, will be able to study with the best teachers of the country,” said the rector of the National Research University Misis Alevtina Chernikova , who replaced Dmitry Livanov in this position of the current Minister of Education and Science.

The leaders of ITMO and MISIS, as well as the six most prestigious Russian universities - HSE, Moscow State University, IFTI, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg State University and UrFU - were formed at the end of 2014 under the auspices of Rosobrnadzor and the Ministry of Education and Science of open education. At a dedicated meeting, there was no question of creating a national platform of online courses. Dmitry Livanov only noted that "the Council will become a mechanism for supporting interaction between universities in the field of using high-quality educational content in online education." And only a little more than three months later it became known that by the first of September 2015, the aforementioned eight universities should launch a platform for online courses. Each university will invest at least 50 million rubles into the project and prepare for the new school year at least four courses in the Mooc format (Massive Open Online Course). Mooc is an educational technology that allows you to organize training up to several tens of thousands of people at the same time.

Each of the eight universities will invest at least 50 million rubles in the project and will prepare four courses in Mooc format by September by September

“First of all, you need to create high -quality courses that will provide training results similar to full -time courses in leading universities. It is necessary to change the relationship in our country to distance learning, to prove that it can be effective and convenient. The next step is to provide students with the opportunity to choose an online course as an alternative to a traditional study of courses at any university. In parallel with this, it is no less important that universities are profitable to use high -quality courses in the implementation of their educational programs, ”the director of the Center for New Educational Technologies at the Ural Federal University Vasily Tretyakov shares a plan of actions.

The main problem at the preparatory stage, according to the rector of ITMO “is to conduct administrative-organizational decisions that allow students of any universities to count distance courses according to full-time educational programs. Here, of course, the ministry will help us, which is why the Board of the Council for online education was headed by the Minister of Education and Science. ” The rector of NITU MISIS also notes this cooperation as one of the main advantages: “Unlike most foreign educational platforms, we are aimed at implementing online learning in the real educational process at the state level in the implementation of this project.”

The situation when several leading universities in close cooperation with the state create a single national online education platform is unique. In the USA, EDX is the initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, and Coursera is two professors of computer sciences from Stanford, Andrew NG and Daphne Colller. In China, there is also no official resource for online courses. There is a localized EDX - Xuetangx , a platform with a laconic domain Chineeze Moocs -the result of the University of Beijing with the world's largest Alibaba Internet sales company, well, two more of the online courses with unpronounceable names of Genshuixe and two more popular in the Middle Kingdom Qingtajiao . In the Spanish-speaking world, there are several ambitious multinational platforms, for example, Miriadax and Platzi , but not one of them is an official site of online education for a single country.

Access to all students of students will be free on the Russian platform. It may only have to pay for the services related to a full -time exam or identification of a person, so that the courses are counted really to those who viewed and learned them. Honestly, students who have completed the online program will be able to get the test for the online courses listed on the platform in their universities, even if the alma matster is not included in the listed eight.

At each of the eight universities (hereinafter-more), certification centers will be created, in which those who want to document their online education can come to take exams. “This has been done,” as the director of the Center for the Development of Electronic Educational Resources of Moscow State University Denis Yanyshev told us, “primarily for the identification of the student for identification certificates accepted in our state, whether it be a passport or military ID.” Thus, we can talk about the emergence of official microdiprome in our country - certificates of Mooc from the National open education platform - which can be brought to the educational part for the test or supplement their resume.

It cannot but rejoice that the innovation, first of all, expands the powers of students in the management of the educational process. “The introduction of such a format of the educational process allows you to increase the practical part of the training by transferring the theoretical part online, widely using the technology of training“ 24/7 ”, that is, we will provide the student with the opportunity to pass the theoretical course at a convenient time,” said the rector of NITU MISIS Alevtina Chernikova .

Role distribution

The main direction of the national open education platform is the transfer to the online learning system of basic disciplines studied from the 1st to the 3rd course of the undergraduate. She will carry out the relationship of all project participants: universities creating training courses, universities that use courses and embed them into their educational programs, as well as students.

By May 1, 2016, 8 universities-founders plan to prepare and place about 100 training courses on the educational platform

According to Alevtina Chernyakova “By May 1, 2016, 8 universities-founders plan to prepare and place about a hundred training courses on the educational platform”. The courses will be created on the material base of the universities themselves, each of which has to one degree or another experience in creating online courses. So, Moscow State University has a university platform without borders, and MFTI has a site with a collection of video lectures of leading teachers.

At the same time, they are going to place not only specially designed distance courses for this, but also trained on other educational platforms on the upcoming resource. “HSE is the only Russian universities that have already posted more than twenty online courses on international educational platforms. - says the Vice -Rector of the Tower Sergey Roshchin , - Our work in the field of quality control of the development of courses can be useful to all participants in the project. " The tower will give up all 22 Mooc prepared for Coursera and plans to continue to prepare new courses by concentrating his efforts on managerial and socio-economic sciences. The University of Misis will come up with courses on material science, physical chemistry, thermodynamics, the resistance of materials, the basics of design. Moscow State University is responsible for fundamental objects - physics, mathematics and chemistry. ITMO will create courses on information technologies, and developing them, they promise to focus not only on students, but also on schoolchildren. The priority area for URFU - basic courses for future engineers, such as higher mathematics, engineering mechanics, electrical engineering and electronics.

“Unified courses were not specifically developed,” says Denis Yanyshev from Moscow State University, “in addition to the most general reasons about the format: these are small video lectures for 10-20 minutes and written work with cross-assessment as managers. Pupils will be invited to check each other's work themselves, which is actually also a small but pedagogical practice. All other components can vary: if this is a course in physics or chemistry, then more illustrations are needed, and if it is a course from some “starry” teacher, then a simple recording of the lecture can be quite exciting. ”

The task of building the architecture of the technical solution was taken by Fizteh. To date, a general list of requirements for the system has been formed, taking into account the main user scenarios, a draft version of the resource structure has been designed on their base and a number of training support systems have been compared. The head of the laboratory of innovative educational technologies of MIPT Taras Pustova clarifies: “The result was the choice of Open EDX as a basic solution. But it must be understood that we not just “took Edix”, but designed a system where Open EDX is an important, but not the only part. And it was conceived in such a way as to implement those scenarios of training, collecting and analyzing information from electronic portfolio, storage and provision of access to personal data that meet the challenges of modernity and vision of universities participating. ”

As for the association, it will be open to the entry of new universities. True, while the participants agreed that the first two years no one would enter it. The ITMO rector Vladimir Vasiliev explains the paradox by the fact that “the first thing is to establish organizational issues, formulate the grounds for conducting an examination of the content, find the optimal ways to disseminate educational materials through an open electronic platform and, of course, prepare a regulatory framework for counting online courses for educational programs of Russian universities.”

Online education policy

Unfortunately, even online education did not stand aside from the geopolitical crisis of the last year. The President of EDX Anantu Agagarwal , who came shortly before, had to speak in Moscow, had to deprive the inhabitants of Crimea of access to the platform in January of this year: “The educated world is the best world. We hope to obtain permission from the US Treasury Foreign Assets Office, but so far, with great regret, we are forced to block access to all online courses for EDX for residents of Crimea. ” Moreover, earlier, Agarvalus managed to defend listeners from Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

After the precedent around the topic of online courses, a fairly strong tension arose. At the meeting of Dmitry Medvedev with representatives of education companies, one of the participants expressed fears regarding the Western MoC platforms: “EDX sets himself the task of teaching a billion people after a while. From our point of view, this, including the threat of national security, because several tens of thousands of Russian students simply pay there, respectively, money, and we are sure that we need to grow such national champions as quickly as possible at home. ” In response, the Prime Minister noted that “import substitution in the field of knowledge is ridiculous”, but the idea of creating a competitive resource began to be discussed at the highest level.

Well, in addition to prestige for the country, online learning can save budget funds, while involving more people in the educational process. At an organized higher school of the economy, a round table “Ways for the development of education in economic turbulence” Rector of HSE Yaroslav Kuzminov equated the spread of Mooc with the Gutenberg revolution: “The appearance of online courses can be compared with the transition from the transcription of books in medieval monasteries to their mass press, they make more economically and more efficiently the task of transmitting a quality educational content ". Therefore, the creation of a national online base of open education is quite combined with the idea of economic optimization of higher education, to which Russian officials are returning every now and then.

PS

Given all introductory and, especially, the fact that the creation of the platform is allotted for only five months, we could say: the chances of getting a bubble and the best educational resource of the country are approximately equal. But we prefer “always look at the bright side of life” in Edutainme and therefore we believe that on September 1, 2015 we can write without remorse of conscience about the launch of the coolest platform for online courses in the world. And that all Russian students officially had the opportunity to adopt knowledge from the most prominent teachers, regardless of their place of residence and the results of the exam.