New tracks and participants

This year, besides the usual ITMO.EduLeaders tracks Lecturers and Junior Lecturers, two new categories – Teams and Prospective Leaders (for lecturers from other universities) – were added.

“Our new tracks were added due to a high demand – we were often asked if it’s possible to apply as a team, given that one person isn’t always enough to implement a large-scale educational project. This year, we received lots of applications for the Teams track and six of them made it to the finals. We also aimed to attract talented lecturers to ITMO and that’s how we came up with the track for specialists working at other institutions. We received lots of applications for it as well and we believe that we should continue working in this direction,” says Ekaterina Dzhavlakh, head of the ​​Office of Educational Technologies.

The organizers also reviewed the list of categories and added new ones. This year’s final list looks like this: Online Courses, Educational Video, Evaluation System, Digital Pedagogy, Pedagogical Management, as well as Game-Based Learning and Gamification, Active Learning, and Project Work, which were the most popular among applicants.

A total of 62 applications were submitted; 42 of them – by ITMO employees and the rest by participants from other universities: Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Volgograd State Technical University, the National Research Tomsk State University, Tver State University, Baikal State University, and St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design. An expert jury composed of heads of the university’s departments and schools, as well as First Vice Rector Daria Kozlova, evaluated 12 projects.

“The participants presented fascinating and well-thought-out cases. And the main thing is, those weren’t theoretical concepts or pipe dreams but reflections of the participants’ actual work. I personally favor projects that are substantial and evidently beneficial for users,” says Ilya Kuftyrev, head of ITMO’s School of Life Sciences.

The finalists

Olga Gofman and her fellow lecturers from the Institute of International Development and Partnership designed a course on learning and information processing skills. Its goal is to teach students to manage their studies, look for information, check facts, as well as take notes and memorize information. By the end of the course, 92% of the students commended both theoretical and practical classes and 46% said that skills they’ve acquired will come in handy.

Alexandra Maiurova and her colleagues from the Faculty of Energy and Ecotechnology had faced a challenge – students had a hard time in the Risk Management course. The lecturers came up with a way to make the learning process more diverse by implementing interactive practices, such as individual cases, practical tasks inspired by real situations, and trips to the Baltic Shipyard.

Among the finalists was also Violetta Savoskula, a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Energy and Ecotechnology, who shared her achievements in the improvement of the learning process – when teaching Alternative Energy Sources Research, she gave the students an opportunity to study five ecology-related topics through debates.

Elena Bykovskaya, a lecturer at the Faculty of Energy and Ecotechnology, and her colleagues formed a team made of ITMO employees and invited experts in order to design an experimental modular course called Green Technologies. As a result, they were able to not only approach this field using various perspectives but also to distribute the workload between team members.

A team of lecturers from the Institute of International Development and Partnership headed by Antonina Puchkovskaya worked on a way to unite STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) students for collaborations. As a result, they came up with the Digital Curatorship project, as part of which the students implemented three cases: Mayakovsky Life for the Vladimir Mayakovsky City Public Library, a news-focused social media aggregator, and a game on Russian culture for the Institute of Russian Literature.

In their turn, Galina Zhirkova, an associate professor at the Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations, and her colleagues from the Center of Social Sciences and Humanities, are engaged in technohistory – a field that studies how natural sciences and humanities influence each other and how scientific breakthroughs influence history. This year, the team presented the Technohistory in Space and Time project, as part of which they created moodboards for an exhibition and worked at research labs.

A team headed by Alexandra Shparberg, a lecturer at the Foreign Language Training Center, presented an evaluation system for the professional development course English as a Medium of Instruction. The participants not only received personal recommendations but also designed plans, demo classes, and other useful teaching materials.

Meanwhile, Daria Chashkina, a senior lecturer at Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Faculty of Economics, conducts a course on the basics of entrepreneurship for students of various faculties. During classes, they form teams and get a chance to learn about innovative infrastructure, as well as try their hand at creating a startup, implementing a business project, and placing it on the market.

A lecturer from the Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations, Anastasia Bulygina presented a project on fast education: she teaches her students how to create beautiful and memorable presentations in just a few minutes using TikTok. By watching her short videos, you can learn how to improve your presentation, where to look for templates and images, and find out other useful tips.

Among the finalists was last year’s winner Ekaterina Tyurikova, a lecturer at the Faculty of Energy and Ecotechnology. She made a presentation on the methods for evaluation of students’ complex skills as part of the Reliability of Technical Systems course. Her approach helps see how prepared the students are for working on advanced projects.

Another finalist, Konstantin Pravdin, an assistant at the Faculty of Control Systems and Robotics, explains complex mathematical problems and evaluates the progress of Bachelor’s students with the help of his YouTube channel Plus C. Last year, his project was awarded at the annual We Are in the Future conference by Gazprom Neft.

Yulia Romanenko, a lecturer at the Institute of International Development and Partnership, who won last year with the course on Emotional Intelligence, this time around presented her new project – a series of short video lectures with practical tips and additional materials for soft skill courses.

The winners of the contest will be announced on May 20 at the ITMO.Open Education conference, where the best lecturers and mentors acknowledged for their skills will receive their awards.