MOOCs Usage in Russian Higher Educational Institutions: Why Is Not There Any Increasing Demand for MOOCs During Emergency Distance Learning

The abrupt transition to distance learning during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an urgent need for online resources at higher education institutes (HIEs). Creating analogues of traditional full-time courses demanded for competencies and time resources. In this case ready-made massive open online courses (MOOCs) were supposed to be the most obvious and fastest solution for HIEs. However, analytics demonstrated that educational institutions did not consider MOOC a promising option. This contradiction served as an incentive to conduct this research, which includes the analysis of both non-reactive (MOOCs platform analytics) and reactive (online survey and interviews with instructors) data. Based on our research, we can conclude that the reasons for not integrating MOOCs at Russian HIEs during the COVID-19 pandemic are the following: the peculiarities of MOOCs format, low motivation of instructors, administrative risks, and the uncertainty of HIEs' and national policies on MOOCs integration. This article will be useful for those who determine educational policy in Russia, university administrators, methodologists responsible for the development of digital educational technologies in HIEs, as well as researchers of higher education. © 2023 Moscow Polytechnic University. All rights reserved.

The world of professions in the context of work and employment: Pandemic and digital vertigo

This article is an Introduction to the special issue of the journal, which is focused on the recent transformations of professions and occupations. The main purpose of the article is to analyze the contemporary social, technological, and economic context, in which Russian professions and occupations are, and to review the latest research in this field conducted both in Russia and abroad. First, we identify key modern challenges to professionalism, including the volatility of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on professional work, the development of digital labor platforms, and how the state and management react to all of these. Next, we provide an overview of some latest research on professions and professionalism. We suggest that the sociology of professions, as an independent disciplinary field, is currently in crisis. This is because the established theoretical models of professionalism are being questioned by the rapidly changing structure of professional employment, methods of control and management of professional work, as well as transformations of the content of this work. In particular, we consider the concepts of “connecting professionalism” and “client professionalism” and show how contemporary professions form their institutional identity in organizational and managerial contexts. Then, in this context, we provide a brief review of the articles that are published in this special issue. Finally, we discuss some possible directions for future research on professions and professionalism, with a special focus on the digitalization process and the pandemic crisis. © 2021 Russian Public Opinion Research Center, VCIOM. All rights reserved.

Professional autonomy and administrative during the pandemic digitalization: The perspective of university teachers

Digitalization of higher edu- cation and the accompanying academic and expert discussions began long be- fore the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the forced transition to remote learning at Russian universities in 2020 actual- ized a new round of debates on how the use of digital technologies is changing the landscape of higher education, the roles and modes of work of academic professionals. This paper is based on a series of semi-structured interviews with the teaching staff of 37 Russian universi- ties, which were collected in March-June 2020. Interviews were aimed at the complex analysis of the teaching profes- sion transformations in the conditions of remote force majeure. The key attention is paid to the transformations of academ- ic autonomy in the new conditions. We show that in the conditions of "forced remote teaching", two multidirectional trends are observed. On the one hand, in the context of an unprecedented natural experiment on the mass transfer of all work processes to a remote format, there is a revival of traditional forms of aca- demic autonomy through the self-organ- ization of the teaching community, the emergence of networks of cooperation and mutual support between academic professionals. On the other hand, teach- ers note the strengthening of adminis- trative control and bureaucratization of the educational process. In some cases, this leads to an escalation of the con- flict between the administration and the teaching community and is perceived by the latter as a threat to academic auton- omy. The presented analysis concludes with a discussion of possible measures that can be taken to reduce the potential negative effects of the identified trends on the entire higher education system. © 2021 Russian Public Opinion Research Center, VCIOM. All rights reserved.

University Professors and the Digitalization of Education: on the Threshold of Force Majeure Transition to Studying Remotely

In March 2020, Russian higher education was pretty fast to start working remotely due to the threat of the Covid-19 spread. At the same time, discussions around the development of online education inRussiahave been ongoing for several years. Based on the data from semi-structured interviews with teaching staff in leading Russian universities, the paper studies issues related to using digital technologies and professors’ attitude to educational process digitalization. University teachers are shown to consider students and public policy as key drivers of the educational process digitalization. At the same time, the alarmist view on the active spread of digital technologies is still widespread. Professors who participated in the study did not consider different types of remote and online teaching as an equal substitute for traditional offline formats and technologies. This leads to conservative forecasts regarding the future of online and remote teaching. The results seem mostly important, since they present the situation in Russian universities on the eve of the forced transition to remote teaching due to the spread of the Covid-19 virus. These results make it possible to predict the difficulties that universities may face during the transition to emergency remote teaching. В марте 2020 года российское образование в форс-мажорном Порядке перешло на удаленный режим работы вследствие угрозы распространения вируса Covid-19. В то же время дискуссии и деятельность по развитию онлайн-образования в России ведутся уже несколько лет. В статье на основе данных полуструктурированных интервью с преподавателями ведущих российских университетов рассматриваются вопросы, связанные с использованием академическими работниками цифровых технологий и отношением представителей высшей школы к цифровизации образовательного процесса накануне форсированного перехода к удаленному режиму работы. Показывается, что в качестве ключевых драйверов цифровизации образовательного процесса преподаватели рассматривают студентов и государственную политику в области высшего образования. При этом превалирует алармистский взгляд на активное распространение цифровых технологий, которые не рассматриваются как равноценная замена традиционным офлайн-форматам и технологиям. Это приводит к осторожным прогнозам в отношении перспектив онлайн-образования и образования дистанционного. Полученные результаты имеют особую актуальность, поскольку они дают представление о ситуации в российских университетах накануне вынужденного перехода к дистанционному режиму работы из-за распространения вируса Covid-19 и позволяют прогнозировать трудности, с которыми могут столкнуться университеты в процессе этого перехода.