HSE to Transfer Online Education Platform to Mail.ru Cloud Solutions
Starting April 7, 2020, as part of the distance education support programme in Russia, Mail.ru Group will provide HSE University free use of Mail.ru Cloud Solutions and other services. These services will ensure the reliable and uninterrupted operation of HSE’s online education platform, which university students and a number of regional universities use.
Under an agreement with Mail.ru Group, HSE will be able to transfer its online course management system to the Mail.ru Cloud Solutions infrastructure. The company will provide server capacities, as well as storage for video lectures and other educational content. This will allow HSE to increase the scale and operational capacity of its online education, as well as ensure the system’s reliability and security even with high levels of user traffic and file loads. 76 online courses are currently available, and this list will soon be expanded. To date, 24 university-network partners already use the courses.
In the current semester (March-July 2020), HSE has opened access to its online education platform to regional universities in order to aid their transition to remote education. 32 universities have applied for free access to HSE online courses for their students. In the future, it is planned to develop partnerships, integrate other Mail.ru Group IT services into HSE’s online education platform, as well as create joint educational and infrastructure projects.
‘We want students to be able to continue their studies, even if they are at home, and we want teachers to be able to continue teaching their courses without having to sacrifice quality. The HSE platform allows not only HSE students to continue their studies online, but students of other universities. We are glad that with our cloud infrastructure from Mail.ru Cloud Solutions we can help hundreds of thousands of students across the country continue their education in the current difficult period for the whole country,’ says Sergey Mardanov, Director of University Cooperation at Mail.ru Group.
‘Mail.ru Group has 20 years of experience with developing services built to handle high operational loads. In the current situation, we decided to support HSE with our cloud solutions so that the University’s online learning platform used by hundreds of thousands of students could cope with the large volumes of activity while operating without interruptions,’ says Ilya Letunov, Head of Mail.ru Cloud Solutions. ‘In light of the massive transition of educational institutions to remote instruction, this is especially true, and we are glad that we can help.’
Alexei Chukarin, Senior Director for Digital Transformation, HSE University
HSE University has long been engaged in the development and implementation of digital technologies and distance learning programmes. In the current conditions, our experience has become popular among other universities, and we are ready to provide our online courses free of charge to support the educational process. It is gratifying that the leaders of the Russian IT industry have responded to the needs of the educational sector and are ready to provide technical assistance to universities by providing their capacities. We thank Mail.ru Group for this support. We have several joint projects planned with partners to help solve the problems of our universities in organizing the distance learning process.
Earlier, Mail.ru Group introduced a set of measures to help schools and universities quickly transition to distance learning during the pandemic. For distance learning, users can use free features of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks, such as communities, chats, live broadcasts, applications, etc. In addition, the educational portal GeekBrains is giving universities free access to their online learning system and courses. To answer questions from faculty and university staff, Mail.ru Group has launched hotlines on social networks.