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Прорывные инновации в российских и зарубежных университетах в условиях пандемии COVID-19
Буденкова Евгения Александровна, кандидат педагогических наук,
e-менеджер Языковой Онлайн Академии, г. Пиджн Фордж, США
Аннотация. Рассмотрены и проанализированы лучшие прорывные практики вузов в области электронного образования и сетевого социального партнерства во время новой короновирусной инфекции COVID-19
Ключевые слова. Теория прорывных инноваций, методологический подход, электронное образование, малый и крупный бизнес, ключевые компетенции, сетевое социальное партнерство
Disruptive innovations in Russian and Abroad Universities under the COVID-19 pandamic conditions
Budenkova Evgenia Aleksandrovna, PHd in Education, e-manager of Language Online Academy, Pigeon Forge, USA
Abstract. Best HEIs’ disruptive practices in the area of electronic education and networking social partnership during new coronovirus infection COVID-19 are observed and analyzed
Key words. Theory of disruptive innovation, methodological approach, electronic education, small and corporate business, core competences, networking social partnership
Current situation in higher education sector can be contemplated from different perspectives in the substantial globalizing and international context, being up-to-date even under COVID-19 pandemic conditions:
*boosting up international university presence and reputation by the use of world university ranking events, arranged in the format of open online global summit, democratizing decision making process with the help of digital networking tools, such as unlinear, open-to-choice, instant hashtag supported discussion;
*more sufficient media support, that identifies strengthened comprehension of higher education importance in the light of global threats;
*liberal commercialization sponsorship and transfers, indicating understanding of the existing connection between education quality evolvement and liberalization of commerce flows, for example, by ecommerce mechanism boosting up;
*strengthening elearning position in the global market scale;
*integration of higher education and business sector on the basis of individuality centered approach and personalization of services providing processes;
*debureaucratization and deformalization in the university education area without quality loss, gained by the means of evidenced based practices implementation.
Obviously, COVID-19 threat has influenced processes of higher education evolvement, giving an inevitable necessity and at the same time prospective incentive to move from the use of substantial innovation to disruptive ones at the Russian and abroad HEIs. Let’s take a look at such sustainable tool of so-called top university promotion and academic reputation support at the international scale as world university ranking from the perspective of COVID-19 pandamic. University ranking practice, being more or less sustainable practice, has been instantly transformed from 2011, when it shifted to international officially online announced list of universities, demonstrating high performance results from the perspective of visual and evidence based practices.
Under circumstances of COVID-19, social distancing requirements have significantly challenged international partnership, including such variation as constructive worldwide contests, intended to transform competitive spirit into self improvement incentive in the light of COVID-19 pandamic threat, objectively actualizing necessity of partnership and support. Cause of that, university ranking, having originally competitive roots, have been continuing to disrupt into collaborative practice within the reconceptualized innovative formats of virtual world academic summit arrangements. Current university ranking within boundries of changing global academic discussion formats (such as instant messaging and global chat aggregation via hashtags) has gained new features, among them democratization and openness of decision making process, result visualization on the strengthening principles of evidenced based practices, that proves that debureaucratization and deformalization in the education area doesn’t necessarily mean quality loss, but, otherwise, evolves open science principles on worldwide scale, personalize public, socially meaningful communication, leading to networking social partnership in far going perspective. Within the framework of the article, the opportunity to discuss and possibly transform liberalizing roles of so-called peripheral entities, including higher educational institution worldwide, by the means of socially meaningful networking tools as Facebook and VK is provided. On Facebook, article readers are proposed to participate in the conversation, arranged in the form of live sream networking event within the boundaries of the disruptive e-conference ‘New methodologies & elearning practices in the post COVID-19 pandamic’, and create their own content to make their personalized contribution to the whole liberalization process [Budenkova 2020-2021]. Also, on VK, the possibility to socially network, discussing the LinkedIn article «Core competences of bachelor students’ development by the means of elearning in the Russian HEIs» is provided [Budenkova 2020], and, from our point of view, this social networking practice got potential to evolve social presence of higher educational institutions and civil community involvement in HEIs reputation and prestige boosting process.
Strengthening position of higher education in the public eye worldwide and growing awareness of its influence under global threat conditions are becoming more and more obvious within the framework of social media provision and support. Evolving social partnership between local university TVs and such corporate leaders as Wall Street Journal, Apple, cable TV national providers, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Western Union indicates that global business under COVID-19 jeopardy is getting interested in social partnership with peripheral entities, including media services, provided by university representatives, and this kind of partnership is becoming disruptively available not only to so-called top managers, but to other competent entities, interested in socially meaningful communication. For example, disruptive innovative experience in the area of socially oriented strategic planning and partnership is successfully demonstrated by the University TV of UrFU (Ural Federal University), that got the winning corporate Media leader award in 2017, and VolSU (Volgograd State University) TV, partnering with the Municipal authority of Volgograd City within the framework of VolSU public diplomacy centre project activity. The VolSU TV implements media provision and support of university public diplomacy centre affairs in the field of corporate, academic and municipal representatives’ collaboration with international partners in order to evolve efficient economic, scientific and intercultural connections. University of California TV boosts its social and business network by the means of alumni – professors’ partnership evolvement, arranged in the form of e-discussions, concerning the issues on building meaningful connections between corporate and brick & mortar settings, including global contexts in the post COVID-19 pandamic. Also, it’s possible to talk about appearing transformation of university media perspective on its social profile and representation through the lens of community networking capabilities. Having analyzed the website front page of the Ulyanov state pedagogical university through this perspective, we conclude that the methodology of website construction has shifted to more socially oriented contexts and simultaneously personalization by the usage of the following features: appearance of the section «most popular links» with the embedded VK.com logo link, leading to the student media centre of USPU; socially oriented surveys inclusions; online governmental services provision, integrated with social networking services, for example Facebook.com and Odnoklassniki.ru.
The objective proof of strengthening awareness of the higher education importance in the light of global threats, including pandemics, is appearance of HEIs oriented financial instruments in the field of substantial banking system, including ecommerce area. Western Union demonstrates the samples of commerce flow liberalization and ecommerce mechanism boosting up in the HEIs area by supporting international HEI students’ money transfers globally and gives an opportunity to pay for higher education, including university elearning, without excessive overbureaucratized banking procedures, often appearing in the concern with international money transfers. Talking about ecommerce disruptive current technologies, it’s worth mentioning the emerge of social networking services oriented banks, as TalkBank for example, updated their commercialization sponsorship and transfer proposals by the means of artificial intelligence, embedded in the social networking services background. But, frankly speaking, nowadays this is only prospective opportunity for Russian HEIs to grow their social presence and educational services provision by the means of social networking market and supported ecommerce tools, for example VK Market and VK Pay ecommerce services.
Strengthening social and business position of HEIs worldwide under the COVID-19 pandemic conditions obviously requires changes, concerning the issues of keeping social distance, that subsequently evolve elearning actuality in the global market scale, and at the same time staying socially involved during the COVID-19 restrictions. All of the mentioned above actualize the questions, that need answers, proposing disruptive theoretical background (up-to-date methodology, theoretical approaches) and practice-oriented solutions (models, e-projects, supporting web tools) in the area of integration of business and brick & mortar university settings and higher education liberalization under the influence of growing need in social community presence and activity. Having analyzed corporate sector’s elearning strategy under COVID-19 conditions, TechJury.net, about 98% US corporate businesses plan to incorporate elearning into corporate settings by 2020 and business sector successfully increases profits by using elearning experiences, including getting such benefits as boosting up employees' revenue. Under the COVID-19 circumstances, sustainable brick and mortar establishments demonstrate a drastic shift to implementation of disruptive technology use, what's habitually used in corporate sector, for example, University of the People (Uopeople https://www.uopeople.edu/), naming themselves as Education Revolution, provide tuition free degree getting opportunities globally disruptively online, also Iowa Community College Online Consortium (https://www.iowacconline.org/), being a disruptive innovation itself, provides opportunity to get a degree, including online settings, with the possibility to shift from one Consortium college to another one, depending on colleges' facilities and students' needs. Within the boundaries of e-conference «New methodologies & elearning practices in the post COVID-19 pandamic», the theory of disruptive innovations and its principles have been proposed as the prospective methodology in the area of elearning implementation as a possible way to build bridges between corporate sector, demonstrating results out of elearning embedment into the workflow in the reference to work satisfaction and overall revenue growth, and substantial HEIs settings, shifting to disruptive elearning practices. Another more or less substantial methodological approach, being under COVID-19 pandemic disruptively reconceptualized, is competence-based approach, that nowadays got a tendency to be implemented in disruptively arranged online environments, for example, virtual internship arrangements in the forms of digitalized professional contests, digitally embedded, often by the means of social networking services, in the educational brick & mortal university background and mixed university & corporate workflows. So, it’s possible to talk about possible shift in the methodological approach implementation in HEIs practice from brick and mortar settings, often substantially integrated with blended mode opportunities, to augmented reality options. Great example of that, from our point of view, is Microsoft offer from London’s top fashion innovators, giving the opportunity to boost students’ digital human stylist competence by the means of augmented reality app, offering the possibility to personalize & disruptively bring augmented reality interactivity into the process of digital fashion design competence boosting up [Microsoft 2020]. We look at the possibility to make digital competence development process up-to-date to the COVID-19 pandemic social distancing requirements and other restrictions from the point of social networking services framework. Language Online Academy (VK & Facebook residency available on https://www.facebook.com/Language-Online-Academy-1027) has offered to the public eye judgement the digital project «Big City Alive» within the disruptive Yandex Block service environment. Conceptual background of e-project is presented in the article «Core competencies development by the means of elearning in Russian HEIs» [Budenkova, 2020].
The practice-oriented e-project «Big City Alive» is educational disruptive e-series, being socially meaningful for Big City citizens set of episodes and posts, published on popular social networking services (VK, Facebook, Yandex Block) among big city livers in the period of COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the e-project implementation is the social support and development of life spirit in the Big City e-community during COVID-19 pandemic, evolvement of intercity and international cooperation by the means of social networking services, Bit City citizens involvement into digitalization of the city electronic environment with the usage of social networking publishing tools options (blog post, article, video & text messages, live stream video session, digital map embedment, created online event notification within group of social networkers), providing opportunities to create socially meaningful content, that makes a difference under the COVID-19 pandemic conditions and social distancing restrictions. With the materials of the e-project the article readers can get acquainted and possibly get involved in the newsfeed of e-manager of Language Online Academy [Budenkova 2020-2021]. E-project is represented in the form of annotated digital e-series, that translated into English language, and narrates about Big City life from the perspective of their citizens and digital tourist perspective, e-series is openly located on Facebook and VK social networking services and invites Big City citizens to constructive discussions participation and socially-oriented event arrangements in the form of webinars and live stream sessions. Also, total E-project results are published on Google book creator service, that gives an opportunity to create and publish disruptively individual, cooperative or mix e-books or the whole e-libraries, or on Webinar.ru platform.
In the conclusion, we are glad to resume, that the live in Russian HEIs during COVID-19 pandemic can be nowadays characterized with the debureaucratization and deformalization sustainable and disruptive tendencies growth without quality loss, gained by the means of usage of state-of-the-art methodologies and theoretical approaches, being disruptively reconceptualized, evidenced based practices implementation with the boundaries of social networking services environment, ecommerce tools integration, university reputation and social presence boosting up and disruptive elearning practices development.
Sources and Literature
1. Budenkova, E.A. Core competencies development by the means of elearning in Russian HEIs [E-source]. // LinkedIn Article Repost, 2020. URL: https://vk.com/wall584792110_31 (retrieved date 18.10.2020).
2. Budenkova, E.A. Speculation on World University Ranking 2020 [E-source]. // E-proceedings of the e-conference «New methodologies & elearning practices in the post COVID-19 pandamic», Language Online Academy, Pigeon Forge, 2020-2021. Facebook live stream session. URL: https://www.facebook.com/100012424904373/ videos/1000543213703166 (retrieved date 18.10.2020).
3. Chernev, B. 27 Astonishing Elearning Statistics by 2020 [E-source]. // TechJury.net Blog post. https://techjury.net/blog/elearning-statistics/ (retrieved date 19.10.2020).
4. Imagining personalized, interactive wardrobes [E-sourse]. // Microsoft company website Blog Post. URL: https://msft.it/6007TagID (retrieved date 19.10.2020).