The 2020 eSTARS conference, organized by HSE University in partnership with the global educational platform Coursera, has commenced. For the first time in its history, the event is being held entirely online. At the plenary session and the first panel session, representatives of the world's leading universities, their associations, and educational platforms spoke about the role of digitalization in the development of higher education, the impact of the pandemic on education, and new approaches to how teachers and students can interact.

Degrees in business, technology, and data science will enable students around the world to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. HSE University and Coursera today announced four new online degree programmes at global higher education conference, eSTARS. With upcoming English-language master’s programmes in business analytics, computer vision, data and network analytics, and finance, HSE now has five fully online degrees on the Coursera platform.

Jointly organized by HSE University and Coursera, the international eLearning Stakeholders and Researchers Summit (eSTARS 2020) will be held from December 1 – 2, 2020. It will be the third time the organizers bring together international stakeholders from governments, the academic community, busines, as well as researchers and experts to discuss the present and future of online education.

Until September 30, they can choose 6 different courses

From September 10 to October 8, the intensive educational programme U4Uonline will be held for universities that are integrating online courses from HSE University into their curricula. For the third time, the HSE eLearning Office will bring together regional universities for a professional dialogue on distance education.

How HSE staff prepared for the first fully remote exam session in the university’s history

On June 10, the examination period began at HSE University, and some of the exams are being administered through the use of proctoring technology. This type of exam was trialed on some programmes in May. Below, undergraduate students and a study office employee who worked as a proctor share their experiences of proctored exams.

On February 24, 2014, HSE launched its first course on the Coursera online education platform. Along with St. Petersburg State University and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, HSE was one of the first Russian universities to host a course on the platform. Now HSE ranks among the top ten universities with the highest number of courses available on the platform, offering 91 courses which have garnered 1.6 million subscriptions.

Large online courses will become even more in-demand since the quality and accessibility of education is rising. They will not, however, replace traditional in-person interactions between student and teacher. By relying effectively on digital technologies, universities can ensure a new level of education quality, which, in turn, can meet the challenges of today’s economy. Discussions of online education, at its current stage of development, should be focused not so much on technological solutions, but rather on ecosystems, which encompass students, universities, corporations, states and tech firms, where related human experiences and meanings are of extreme importance. This was the conclusion of participants in the eSTARS 2018 international academic conference on the present and future of online education. HSE and the online learning platform Coursera teamed up to host the event in Moscow on December 5-6.

Dmitry Abbakumov is the first researcher from a Russian university to present their work at the Psychometric Society conference, founded in 1935. He told the HSE new service about his study of online learning and why Russia has not played a major role on the international psychometrics scene – until now.

HSE has launched a new experimental programme called ‘Development of Blended Learning Instruction,’ which is geared towards universities that use HSE’s online courses. In early July, instructors from these universities took part in a blended learning summer school.

From late March and early April, HSE will offer four new coursers on Coursera  on intercultural communication, machine learning, computer vision, and stochastic processes.

By early spring, HSE will have launched a range of new courses on Coursera in psychology, computer language analysis, economics, media and international relations.

users signed up for HSE courses through Coursera and Russia’s National Open Education Platform