Representatives of more than 60 Ukrainian higher educational establishments took part in first All-Ukrainian conference “Digital communications in global space. Blended learning” that took place in January, 27 in Igor Sikorsky KPI.
This topic is extremely relevant since “life is forging ahead and for the time being a student has to have opportunities to learn not only from their lecturers but also get engaged into the latest developments and obtain knowledge from professors of the leading world universities”, stated first pro-rector of the university, academician of Ukrainian NAS, Yurii Yakymenko. Thus, traditional forms applied in studying process as well as new tools emerged in the process of computer technologies and networks development can kick-start reforming of national education. Director of higher education of Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Oleg Sharov spoke about that: “In terms of digital education, Ukraine nowadays is not the world leader but at least this process is rapidly developing, taking on different forms, gaining popularity among both students and teaching staff. An important constituent of this is the project “Prometheus” that we are going to talk about today.
It was the report of cofounder of famous Ukrainian platform of mass open online courses “Prometheus” Ivan Prymachenko under a bit provocative name “Technological reform of studying against “the death triangle” of Ukrainian education that became the fundamental of further conference work.
Ivan Prymachenko started with giving definition to the notion “the death triangle” of Ukrainian education that provoked an interested of those presented and explained that three main obstacles lie at the root of it and they interfere with rapid reforming of national educational field: funds, time and lack of highly qualified teaching staff and education managers. As for the first constituent of this triad, everything is pretty clear: our education is being constantly underfunded. Second one – time – is highly connected with a critical need for specialists, knowledge and skills that correspond to the modern level of science and technologies. Thus, Ukraine simply doesn’t have time for the eventual reforming of this branch: life is calling for people with modern education right now. Third component of the “triangle” raised negative concerns among some visitors but actually this branch is now having major problems that are unlikely to be solved soon.
As the matters concern the project itself, Ivan Prymachenko spoke not only about on-line courses of the university level that allow those willing to obtain modern knowledge to listen to lectures of the best lecturers of the world but also about application of such courses in blended learning. It is the second form of digital technologies application in studying process organization that can be fairly more efficient rather than mere distance learning, since according to the speaker, nowadays nearly 10 percent of those starting to study online, successfully complete the training. Combination of online lectures and in-class learning as well as communication between students and teachers increases learning efficiency substantially. A teacher can immediately control how students absorbed their knowledge, direct their efforts towards the right direction and herewith to encourage everyone to further work in particular way. Certainly technologies of such a combination may vary.
Associate professor of Department of Electronic Computational Equipment Design of Igor Sikorsky KPI, Yevgen Korotkyi spoke about one of these technologies. This was the information about his experience of blended learning implementation in the context of cut in-class workload on basic courses for future electronic engineers. Yevgen Korotkyi uses in teaching his own lectures rather than lectures from “Prometheus” or other similar platforms. Herewith independent lecture review is the basis for further in-class work with lecturer. Efficiency of such learning form has already been proved in practice and other lecturers of the university have started to use this technology.
In the process of further work conference participants familiarized themselves with general working experience of Igor Sikorsky KPI in terms of blended learning implementation; problems of combination of traditional and online learning forms in the field of corruption control; issues of blended learning in terms of “Internet of things” program and other lines of implementation of this powerful tool of modern education in everyday life of educational establishments. And certainly a series of practical issues that arose in the course of conference were discussed as well.