University 2035 Platform. Best practices and services for distance online learning. Part 1
On 16 March 2020 the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation recommended that all Russian universities switch to online provision to ensure continuity of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 crisis, using online platforms and modern technologies. This transition seems to have been comparatively straight-forward for those universities which had already invested in digitalisation. However, universities that had not developed relevant infrastructure and staff competencies faced significant difficulties.
Giving lectures online is a relatively easy aspect of distance learning; implementing teaching methods focused on skills development, such as project-based learning, and keeping students engaged and motivated turned out to be a more challenging task, even for advanced systems.
In this context, University 20.35 launched the goonline.2035.university platform. This new digital platform aims to help universities in moving swiftly to distance learning and to provide students and staff with ready-made solutions for online education.
During the pandemic, the motto of this initiative was “How to increase effectiveness of educational process during the quarantine”. The platform aims to help its users update the format and content of their educational programmes and provides tools for organising project-based learning online.
The main idea was to offer students in Russian universities an intensive online project-based course that would allow them to work on real business problems and develop their practical and communication skills. University 20.35 Digital Platform brings together online educational activities of many universities and online courses from leading online platforms (for example, Coursera and the National Online Education Platform) and provides recommendations about them to support students’ personalised educational path.
Just a month after the pivot to online as a result of COVID-19, the University 20.35 launched a new educational social service — STEPS. STEPS is addressed to teachers of schools and universities and gives them the opportunity to create their own educational space with various online resources from any platform. Teacher and artificial intelligence recommendations also help students maintain their personal educational path and / or share their learning experiences with other students.
Moreover, University 20.35 has offered the following activities: webinars on the VKontakte (a social network) channel about available tools, methodology and best practices for distance online learning; a marketplace of services which could help universities to switch to online provision; free access to online courses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning.
Main problems addressed
A need to build skills and experience in higher education related to online learning
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the learning environment of higher education. Institutions had to rearrange the educational process quickly and this involved facing different challenges. University 20.35 provided a suite of materials and tools to support institutions and faculty members in meeting those challenges.
Support for online student team work and project-based learning
When campuses closed, sufficient resources and information about distance learning were not available and University 20.35 decided to support the higher education system by creating an online user-friendly platform and providing guidelines for teachers and students. The main feature of this initiative is to maintain project-based learning and teamwork for students studying online. The platform facilitates the use of team work, joint project work, discussions and communication between students, which is crucial for the development of 21st century skills.
Personalised education pathways on the basis of robust digital data
Another important priority is to create individual learning pathways for users with the help of AI. The authors of the online platform invite teachers to organise online classes and testing through videoconferences, propose online courses and digital content to strengthen educational programmes, arrange project work online, create individual educational trajectories and analyse group work based on digital data. Students are invited to use online conferences and messages to stay in touch with teachers and classmates, to take free extracurricular online courses from University 20.35’s partners, and benefit from personalised education programmes based on their skills and needs, during quarantine, when they may have more time to master a new digital profession and even launch a start-up.
Mobilising and developing resources
Since 2018, University 20.35 has supported the digital transformation of the Russian higher education system. Together with leading Russian IT-companies, it has created the Russian Educational AI and the digital educational platform of University 20.35, which is now integrated with its new GO Online platform.
The institution provides an intensive training programme for university management teams and has developed and implemented various cutting-edge technological solutions at such workshops, including:
• Developing individual student pathways with AI assistance;
• Recording digital footprints: AI analysed the participants’ interaction in social networks, the results of completed tasks, geolocation, uploaded photos and videos, etc.
• Tracking changes in participants’ mindsets through semantic speech analysis;
• Gathering biometric data to estimate the level of stress and fatigue at different stages of the programme;
• Creating a competence profile of each participant linked to key national technology development programmes.
In two years, University 20.35 has accumulated extensive experience in organising efficient teamwork, which it has used to inform its new platform and channel for online learning.
Fostering effective use and learning
A platform to support online team and project work. The new GO Online platform was designed in a way that universities could engage students in team project work, organise teamwork with distributed participants, give free access to educational content and help students to create learning pathways. It allows teachers to receive information about which tasks a team is currently solving and how tasks are being distributed among students. Moreover, the platform gives personalised recommendations for development to each team member and provides universities with aggregated data on students’ activities.
Using AI to create individualised problem-based intensive programmes for students. One of the distinctive features of the initiative is the use of AI technologies and Big Data for maximum personalisation of the educational programme. University 20.35 can track users’ actions and based on the obtained data, the AI provides the participants with personalised recommendations for further training. This is a key strategy to support effective learning.
University 20.35 organises 2-month intensive programmes for students where they can cooperate with participants from other regions and even from abroad and form a team to solve a specific task from partner companies. In usual circumstances, such intensive programmes take place offline and in-person at partner universities and may include some blended online activities. Now that the offline model has become impossible, the GO Online platform proposes online intensive programmes for anyone interested in the project.
First, an applicant goes through a diagnostic phase, where the system, with the help of AI, analyses their skills and psychological characteristics and suggests relevant courses for self-development on the basis of this information. Second, the participant chooses a task among those proposed by a university or a technological business company. There are several available tasks published online, such as developing a prototype for an energy-saving home, planning a geoinformation system startup, or designing a soil composition monitoring device. The topics cover various fields and require different skills — from operational to engineering — which makes such projects accessible to students with different backgrounds.
5–7 students gather around one project and University 20.35 provides tools, master classes and courses and helps them to cooperate effectively as a distributed team. Finally, each team presents the results of their project. University 20.35 has suggested to partner universities that they can replace regular in-class student practice with such online intensive programmes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Materials and tools to support teachers to build their knowledge of online learning. The GO Online platform has gathered useful materials and tools for teachers and university management on how to conduct online lectures, organise webinars and virtual rooms; how to use online courses and available resources or create their own; and how to implement project-based learning and personal education.
The GO Online channel complements the platform and provides:
• Practice-oriented video modules with practical solutions and life hacks about how to start and maintain engagement in distance learning, what to use, what is effective and what is too complicated and time-consuming;
• Live streaming of discussions with teachers about improving current practices, eliminating bottlenecks, and sharing practices from the field;
• Guidelines on using laboratories with simulators and organising distance work with the equipment. The channel also addresses the following topics:
• Student practice in new circumstances
• Project-based learning and using real tasks from business
• Relevant content for teachers to be used in their online lectures
• Physical education
The channel is innovative in several areas. Its developers highlight that, first, there are always two levels of content: for beginners and for those who are more experienced, so the users can easily choose what is relevant to them. Second, the comments under the videos provide not just feedback, but also useful data for the AI, which analyses requests, comments, answers and creates sequences between the videos for each user. The system navigates and personalises the content. Moreover, the developers teach university leaders how to collect digital footprint information and manage the educational process on the basis of this data.
By Polina Zavalina and Ekaterina Lyubimova
