Seven Days Until eSTARS 2021 International Academic Conference
On December 1st and 2nd, 2021, the eLearning Stakeholders and Researchers Summit (eSTARS 2021), an international online conference organized by HSE University in partnership with Coursera, will take place. eSTARS will discuss pressing issues facing universities today in the context of the growing interdependence of digital technology, the economy and education.
The key topic of the conference will be ‘Digital Transformation: Global Challenges to the Education System’. As a leader in the global online education market and a trendsetter in remote university education in Russia, HSE University has been organizing the conference since 2017. It brings together leading Russian and international experts and representatives of universities, governmental bodies and businesses. The list of key eSTARS 2021 speakers is available on the event website. For the last two years, the conference has been supported by the Network of Universities from the Capitals of Europe (UNICA).
eSTARS 2021: Day 1
The business programme of the conference will open with a plenary session on ‘Digital Transformation: Global Challenges to the Education System’ with HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov and Chief Content Officer at Coursera Betty Vandenbosch.
It will be followed by a panel discussion on ‘How Online Learning Influences University Reputation’ with UNICA President Luciano Saso, First Vice Rector of ITMO Daria Kozlova and representatives of other universities that are actively implementing online education. The moderator of the discussion, Alexander Fadeev, Vice Rector for Digital Affairs at Tomsk Polytechnic University, will ask the participants about the contribution made by online courses to universities’ reputations, the balance of online and on-site learning from the perspective of academic communities, parents and prospective students, as well as the problem of socialization for online students.
The first day of the conference will continue with a roundtable discussion on ‘Public Policy in Education Transformation’ with the participation of representatives of the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, FKU GosTech, and PAO Sberbank.
The panel discussion ‘Development Trends in the Online Education Market,’ will feature representatives of leading platforms, including Marianna Snigireva, CEO of Netology, Alexander Laryanovsky, Managing Partner, Business Development Director of Skyeng, Dmitry Krutov, CEO of Skillbox, and Jennie Drimmer, Senior Regional Director of Enterprise of EMEA at Coursera. They will discuss the changing formats and portfolios of educational products, as well as consumer behaviour and related patterns of monetization, the competitiveness of educational products and platforms, and changing public attitudes to online education. The moderator of the event will be Evgenia Kulik, Director for eLearning at HSE University.
The first day of the conference will conclude with the roundtable discussion ‘Strategies to Implement Online Degrees at Universities’ moderated by Nayeli Wild, Director, Head of EMEA and APAC Partnerships at Coursera. The discussion will feature Sergey Roshchin, Vice Rector of HSE University, Member of the Global Coursera Council, Galina Mozhaeva, Director of the Institute of Online Education of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Adam Fein, Vice President for Digital Strategy and Innovation at the University of North Texas, and Quentin McAndrew, Academic Strategist at Coursera. They will talk about the criteria for choosing partners and platforms for online product implementation, the specifics of regulation and administration, as well as the challenges and prospects for online programmes.
eSTARS 2021: Day 2
The second day of the conference will open with the panel discussion ‘Disruption and the Changing Nature of Online Education’ with Yaroslav Kuzminov, Academic Supervisor at HSE University, and Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera. The event will be moderated by William Kuskin, Associate Dean for Digital Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.
There will also be sessions dedicated to various trends and cases in the digitalization of education. Participants of the session ‘Economics of Online Learning’ will look at universities’ cooperation with companies and the digital transformation of a competency-based approach to professional education. They will also present the concept of a digital university as a key element of the new protectionist model of Russian education. The moderator will be Elena Pokatovich, Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at HSE University.
The applied session ‘Online Learning Methods and Technologies’ will look at improvisational games and interactive learning processes, the potential of the scaffolding method in increasing cognitive engagement in programming MOOCs, the use of chatbot technology in teaching, and more.
The session ‘Digital Transformation and the Influence of Technologies on Education’ will address the question of whether online education at local universities is a digital funnel or a window of opportunity. Participants will examine a bottom-up approach to building a teacher networking system to support teaching in a digital environment. They will also learn how 19,000 principals implemented agile practices in their schools, as well as discuss skill sets for syllabus design and the objective assessment of student development. The moderator will be Ivan Karlov, Director of the Laboratory for Digital Transformation of Education at HSE University.
Participants of the session ‘Digital Services and Platforms’ will look at methodological problems in content and knowledge control, as well as a new type of e-learning environment based on a cross-platform learning model, and other issues.
The session ‘Master’s Programmes: Current Trends’ is dedicated to digital skills in Russian master’s degree programs, as well as approaches to the development of master's programs in the context of digital transformation, and the features of marketing communications in promoting online master's programs.
Participants of the discussion ‘Student Success: Supporting and Accompanying Students of Online Degrees’ will talk about extracurricular services and socialization tools for online students, the distribution of roles, and ways to engage and retain students of online programmes at universities and on platforms. Alexandra Kuzmina, Director of the Center for the Development of Online Learning at Ural Federal University; Pavel Voloshchuk, Academic Supervisor of the Master’s Program in Digital Product Management, Head of the Laboratory for Design Thinking at the Graduate School of Business at HSE University; Olga Sokhneva, Head of Higher Education at Netology; and Gabriel Foglia, Dean of the Business School, University of Palermo (Argentina) will talk about their experiences of providing support for online degree students.
The session ‘Behavioural Aspects of Online Learning’ (moderated by Maria Chumakova, Head of the School of Psychology at the HSE University Faculty of Social Sciences) will be dedicated to psychological predictors of the effectiveness of online learning, the psychological motives behind students’ choice of digital educational resources, learner satisfaction and engagement with online modules, and more.
More information on eSTARS 2021 is available on the conference website.
eSTARS has traditionally been a platform for representatives of HSE University to share their expertise in the digitalization of education with colleagues. HSE University has included online courses in its studies since 2013 and is a co-founder of the National Open Education Platform. Since 2021, HSE University has offered 11 undergraduate and master’s programmes taught completely online (and is set to launch six more programmes from 2022), as well as over 300 online courses for more than six million participants. The university’s efforts have made Russia a global leader in terms of the number of online master’s programmes on Coursera, where the university offers five online degree programmes. In his opening address to students of the university’s newest online programmes at the beginning of the academic year, HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov said that ‘online education is one of the most relevant trends of our time: it has put an end to geographical barriers, time and resource-related limitations, and has made high-quality academic education truly accessible.’
The organizing committee can be contacted at eSTARS@hse.ru.
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