After unscheduled vacations at MEPhI, lessons were resumed in a new, distance format. Before quarantine MEPhI has conducted part of the lectures using online platforms. At the same time, MEPhI is an engineering university, where part of the educational process is based on practical work with complex equipment. How does a university combine digital technology, theory, and practice in the new reality?

Everyone knows

The development of the digital environment is provided by appropriate infrastructure, content and trained specialists. In March, the MEPhI team had to dramatically accelerate the pace of introducing digital technology into the educational process. A new and unexpected challenge is to transfer thousands of students and teachers to the remote mode in a short time. The task is not easy even for a national research university.

Many years of MEPhI experience of work with large educational online platforms came in handy: Coursera, EdX, Open Education, Universarium. At the beginning of 2020, the MEPhI team prepared about a hundred mass open online courses. Over the past five years, the number of students has exceeded 400 000 people. There are not just students, but people with higher education who want to improve their qualifications and get new knowledge. For 2019 about 50 thousand students were trained by the MEPhI courses on the platform ‘Open Education’. By the end of March of this year, about 30 thousand people were studying at the university’s online courses: more than 5000 were MEPhI students, including students from the university’s branches.

According to the MEPhI pedagogical staff, the distance format is very important in the educational process. It removes the routine lecture load from the teacher and allows us to focus on laboratory, practical exercises. Now there are two video studios at MEPhI, where specialists are professionally engaged in shooting, editing, creating video content. Video lectures are equipped with high-quality video graphics and even animation. In March, there was an urgent need to act at an accelerated pace. Soon, the university will open three more video studios to constantly increase the production of high-quality content and consistently transfer all the main subjects to the remote format.

In real-time

Ready-made MEPhI online courses account for about 20% of the total educational material. Therefore, university practices distance learning in real-time.

— For remote classes, we primarily use Skype for Business, Zoom, WebEx platforms. These technologies allow online broadcasting without using material specially recorded at the studio, ” said Valentin Klimov, deputy director of the MEPhI Institute of Intelligent Cybernetic Systems.

Before quarantine, teachers conducted these classes from classrooms equipped with special equipment, and students connected from home or dormitories. But since April 6, teachers conduct all current classes on a schedule from home.

One of the main problems of the mass transition to online learning is related to the unpreparedness of most teachers to it: some older employees have not fully managed working with new technologies. MEPhI solved this issue by creating an assistance system. A young employee of the unit is attached to an experienced age teacher. He arrives at the professor’s house and conducts classes with him. According to management, this methodology works in two directions: young people help the older generation to learn new technologies, and the older generation passes on the teaching methodology to young colleagues

In virtual labs

Now the university has an electronic learning management system LMS (Learning Management System). There are two active platforms at MEPhI - online.mephi.ru and LMS "Vector". Teachers upload their teaching materials to the system, and students receive remote access to educational resources from home or dormitories.

The real laboratory work at MEPhI was replaced with virtual analogs using various simulators and an online laboratory. Students remotely gain access to the stand, work on the emulator, remotely controlling a real physical device. According to V. Klimov, in the near future, the share of virtual reality technologies in engineering practice will increase:

- I am sure that VR technologies (virtual reality technology), AR (augmented reality technology) in education will develop. We already see that all the efforts of our colleagues are aimed at the development and development of new methods for creating new content, the transfer of traditional formats to remote ones. The pandemic served as an additional impetus to the development of new technologies, and we need to use this moment wisely.

One of the problems that universities will encounter is to conduct exams in an online format. MEPhI is preparing for the upcoming tests and exams — testing of the remote control system and face recognition system has begun.

The transition to the online format is also an opportunity to raise the level of training at 11 MEPhI branches located in several regions of Russia. Students and teachers in small towns listen to lectures by prominent scientists; get acquainted with the methodological and scientific developments of the Moscow site of the university.

MEPhI is confident that the pandemic will pass, and new technologies will remain in the educational process.

— “The use of distance learning is very convenient and necessary in some cases,” V. Klimov noted. - For example, this format is well suited for teaching foreign students who can receive knowledge without crossing state borders, or for people with disabilities. Some students may not take academic leave for family reasons and thus not interrupt their studies for a long period. I think we would have come to the mass introduction of distance formats; just now we did it very quickly. After returning to normal mode, all materials will be used. This will allow universities to improve the educational process.

In 2019, MEPhI won a grant from the Ministry of Education and Science to create an international scientific and methodological center. Its purpose is to improve the system of training scientific and pedagogical personnel in the field of mathematics and digital technologies. For two years, MEPhI specialists will train 3,500 teachers from various regions of Russia in digital competencies, so that after that they will transfer knowledge and develop digital technologies in their city and region. MEPhI plans to use this additional resource for a more active and wider transition to the online format.