Online-technologies for the university’s education

The Council meeting headed by the Rector Oleg Polukhin was held via videoconferencing. Aleksandr Nemtsev, the Head of the Department for Education Policy told about the distance learning and its development perspectives at Belgorod State University in 2020-2021. He reminded that BelSU has launched blended learning since 2015. The education with “a real presence effect” has been provided simultaneously for the students in classrooms and those studying on distance. In 2019 OpenBelGU Portal was listed among 21 portals of the federal resource “Modern Digital Education of RF” and introduced mass online courses. According to Aleksandr Nemtsev, due to the online technologies development, the university managed to set to providing all the educational programs via distance learning technologies this spring.

Sergey Borisov, the Director of the Institute of Social Sciences and Mass Communications in case of his division told about the advantages and drawbacks of distance learning. Thus, he focused on the successful implementation of the institute’s roadmap for development of further education programs via distance mode, comprehensive classrooms upgrading by using multimedia equipment. Speaking about the problem areas Sergey Borisov pointed out the lack of the lecturers having skills of videoconferencing and proposed to expand teaching experience in the distance mode.

Oleg Polukhin summed up the meeting by noting that the university is undergoing a critical stage of its development when over 80% of education is provided via videoconferencing.

“The measures that were taken this spring and autumn when we moved to blended learning, enabled us to solve many technical problems quite fast. But we should go further in advancement of this process through timely revealing the problem areas and quality assurance of education,” noted Oleg Polukhin.