E-learning @ UrFU

13:32, September 18, 2014

The supervisory board has approved plans to promote the university in the world rankings and implementation of distance education

In October, the project "Open University" will start in Ural Federal University. It will allow students to choose online courses out of 30 open online courses conducted by the best lecturers of the university with the opportunity to include these courses in their diplomas. The lectures will start in November.

Rectors of federal universities have signed an agreement to implement the project "Open University: the development of e-learning", so the list of courses available will expand significantly and students will have an opportunity to choose courses from any of these universities.

The development of e-education system has been discussed by the members of the supervisory board at a recent meeting.

Today, the university has more than 2 600 students, which study 24 undergraduate and graduate programs through distance technologies. This allows them to get a higher education without coming to the university lecture halls. The training programs are implemented by UrFU Institute of Open Education Technologies.

Full-time students can also use the benefits of distance technologies. About 10 foreign lecturers will give lecture to UrFU students without coming to the university.

Distance learning is based on the project and practice activities. Students have the opportunity to work in virtual labs, business processes simulators, warch an interactive 3D-animation.

We would like to remind, that UrFU has the task to get into the top 100 universities in the world by 2020. University projects aimed at enhancing the global competitiveness caused heated discussions, but in general were approved by the members of the Supervisory Board.

It is recommended to UrFU administration and staff  to focus on the achievement of certain indicators, which are listed in the program on entering UrFU in the number of the leading scientific and educational centers in the world. Special attention should be paid to increasing the proportion of articles in top scientific journals, attracting foreign students and lecturers, as well as cooperation with major companies in the region and country.