The Development of E-Learning Capabilities at Russian Universities: The Case of Massive Open Online Courses

The research conducted is multifaceted one that lies on the intersection of several research fields such as governance of innovation, managing transformation processes in higher education, implementation of the modern approaches to the public administration and developing the technological literacy among the academic staff. Today Russian Universities are interested in developing their online services in order to become more recognizable in the World. Especially it is reasonable for those Universities that are the participants of “5-100” Project aimed at the improvement of the competitive advantages of the Russian Universities among the World-famous scientific and educational centers. At the same time, the teachers are operating in very dynamic circumstances and should be able to keep the interest and attention of the modern students – Digital Natives – and be ready to improve the way of teaching to the manner appropriate to the new generations. The research was carried out among the teachers, who are the authors and co-authors of massive open online courses (MOOCs) from eleven Russian Universities. The primary data was gathered via online survey and the response rate of 44% was achieved. The quantitative factor analysis with SPSS Statistics software showed that teachers’ decision to create and moderate online courses on the Coursera Platform and National Platform “Open Education” is forced both by the push from the administration of the Universities and by the requirements of the modern information society and globalization processes with the decisive influence of the latter force. The information gathered from the respondents during the interview sessions provided some useful insights on teachers’ intention to continue their MOOC activity. It was found that the teachers’ intention to create more MOOCs depends a lot on the appropriate conditions for this activity provided by the Universities.