edX is the world’s largest nonprofit online-learning project by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. About one hundred leading educational establishments and organizations place their courses on the edX platform. Everyone can register for a course and gain new knowledge and competencies.
Within the framework of increasing international competitiveness, Russian higher education undertakes three main tasks: improvement of positions in international rankings; enrolment of talented students from all around the world; and promotion of higher educational study programs. Partnership with one of the largest online-learning platforms will help to accomplish these tasks. This is why the issue of adaptation of the edX platform in Russia has started to be discussed by leading universities in the country, including ITMO University, several years ago. The university has already opened registration for its first online course.
According to Andrei Liamin, the director of Center for Distance Learning, edX experts analyze accurately the quality of every course before downloading it into the platform. Texts, videos, images used for teaching are also checked by the SEO-specialists. EdX chose cooperation with ITMO University with good reason: the University has been developing Open Education projects for several years already, and has launched about ten online-courses on Russian platform “Open Education”, as well as on its own platform ITMO courses.
“Technologies for online learning in Russia have existed for more than ten years already. Due to globalization processes within higher education such online-platforms are becoming also competitive arenas between universities for promising students. Educational Internet platforms start launching courses, which enable students to get almost a new career,” stated Andrei Liamin.
But not all of the universities accept results of online-learning education. Many universities, including MIT and Harvard, upload their courses to edX, but don’t recognize certificates of their completion as a ground for credit of the respective discipline. Other universities may even prohibit their professors to upload educational programs to platforms similar to edX.
In its turn, the Russian system of Open Education differs from the foreign one: some Russian universities can accept results of online-courses at their own discretion. The reason for this is that Russian online learning platforms are developed with governmental support, while edX is an initiative of the universities.
The opportunity to study university-level disciplines online allows school graduates, university applicants and students to reduce the time needed to receive a degree and build their own study path, by collecting certificates that will be accepted by the University. This is a progressive step in the development of higher education. In this way online learning provides opportunities for personalizing education and makes things go faster. In a huge auditorium with 50 students the teacher cannot explain the material to each person separately, but in an online setting it can prepare courses for different paces, and each student can choose the best format for them.
"One of the best aspects of this system is that it is all transparent. Any university can go to the online learning platform and check what lectures a student listened to who wants to receive a transfer credit certificate, which assignments he completed, you can even look at the video of him doing his exam and son. The Educational Internet platform ensures that the certificate is received by the actual student and not someone who has done the work for him. Most importantly, representatives of universities can verify the content of the course and not just the results: for example, you can learn to program in different languages, using different techniques," said Director of the Center for distance learning.
Today in Russia, network education is also becoming more popular. This is where several universities and businesses or other organizations on a contractual basis build a joint educational program. A student studies part of their subjects in one place, and another part in another and so on. Using edX, Russian universities will receive more opportunities for such initiatives.
"By using online educational platforms in Russia, it will make it possible bring the quality of education in regional universities up to the standard of metropolitan universities. Online education gives students from any university access to knowledge and the experience of world-class professors that a student in a regional university would most likely not be able to get due to lack of financial resources," said Andrei Lyamin.
In our rapidly changing world, online learning is becoming one of the ways to quickly obtain new skills and competencies. Employers are paying increasing attention to certificates of additional education as a sign that the candidate does not stop in his or her development.
