HSE ICRT Seminar at Yaroslavl
Moderators of the seminar were Valentin Stepanov, doctor of philology, vice-rector for knowledge management, head of Mass Media Department of the International Academy for Business and New Technologies; Alexander Khodyrev, candidate of pedagogy, associate professor, vice-rector for research of Ushinsky Yaroslavl State University; and Lydia Malygina, candidate of philology, promotion coordinator of HSE International Centre for Research and Teaching. Present were professors from Ushinsky Yaroslavl State University, Yaroslavl State Technical University, Yaroslavl State Medical University, Yaroslavl State Agricultural Academy, and International Academy for Business and New Technologies.
The seminar was held by Ilya Samonenko, head of HSE ICRT, and Evgeny Sokolov, deputy head of Big Data and Information Retrieval School of the Faculty of Computer Science, HSE University, Yandex.Zen developer.
Mikhail Gruzdev, the rector of Ushinsky Yaroslavl State University, opened the event, saying that there exists a primitive understanding of the digital transformation of education today. “Talking about digital transformation, one often means distance learning courses or Internet education platforms. However, this phenomenon is more complex, it changes our whole concept of the world, society, business, economy,” Rector claimed.
He said that personnel training for the digital economy is vital today. “Digital age demands radically new approaches to education. The professors have to use a variety of approaches to attract students,” said Gruzdev.
Valentin Stepanov mentioned that every person has their own experience in the digital world. “Digital technologies develop rapidly, we do not always follow suit. Digital literacy, therefore, is vital today,” he added.
Stepanov stated that the International Centre for Research and Teaching can teach digital literacy to professors. “We will hardly ever catch up with the technologies but at least we’ll have the grasp of them,” Vice-Rector said.
During the presentation of HSE ICRT, Ilya Samonenko mentioned that researchers, educators, and doctoral students are the target group of the Centre. “As part of the Digital Economy national programme, five international centres for personnel training were set up in Russia. One of them is our Centre, based at HSE University’s Faculties of Computer Science and Mathematics, as well as HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics,” mentioned Samonenko.
He pointed out that the Centre develops internship programmes for professors and teaching materials. Expertise work is about to be implemented as well.
“There is a lot of open-access materials online - articles, books, lectures. However, there is a lack of teaching materials for seminars, problem books, exemplary solutions, comments by experienced professors,” added the head of ICRT.
Samonenko claimed that the Centre-educated professors will get access to all these materials. “More than that, they will get access to our library of scientific publications, Yandex.Contest system, a system to generate and check the tasks automatically, engineering infrastructure. Employees of ICRT are willing to be the co-supervisors of coursework and theses of the students whose professors are the interns of the Centre. Moreover, our researchers are ready to conduct joint researches in mathematics and digital technologies with the professors of collaborating universities. These researches are to be published in the international scientific press,” he said.
Evgeny Sokolov talked about the Data Culture programme offered by the Centre.
“This programme is taught for two years to the bachelor students of HSE University. It provides the graduates with the competencies in data analysis useful for later research. The programme has beginner, basic, and advanced levels. We teach the beginner level programme to students of humanities too - students of philosophy, cross-cultural communication, Eastern studies. We begin by teaching computer safety practices, basic media literacy, and big data. Then come statistics and algorithms courses,” mentioned Sokolov, adding that ICRT has online courses on each of these topics.
“Basic level includes Python programming courses, foundations of data analysis, simple machine learning models. Finally, the advanced level encompasses deep learning and ML models,” he concluded.
Alexander Khodyrev thanked the ICRT representatives for the presentations. “I would like to build up cooperation between the Centre and our university. It’s a shame not to use what is freely given. We welcome the representatives of the International Centre for Research and Teaching who are ready to help us solve some topical problems,” Vice-Rector said.
“I see several ways of cooperation between us. The first way is advanced training for our professors who can take your courses and learn to solve various problems in their researches. Next, the digital literacy of professors, in general, will increase after taking your courses. Finally, your teaching materials will boost our best practices,” Khodyrev added.
Inna Ivanova, vice-rector for education of Yaroslavl State Medical University pointed out that this university is also greatly interested in cooperation with HSE ICRT. “The literacy of professors is vital for every university - a medical one, too. We are very interested in the digital literacy of our professors,” she said.
She added that simulation teaching technologies have been making great strides in medicine recently. “This method of education is based on modelling the clinical situation which is often dependent on information technologies. Suchlike technologies cannot be used without certain computer skills. So we are looking for cooperation with the Centre in this field,” Vice-Rector concluded.