Russia: Networked Learning

 

Education is vital in a country’s technical development. The earlier a country’s youths have access to ICTs, the better educated they become of their uses and benefits. Universities are usually the first educational level to adopt computers, and can become the primary drivers in technological advancement in a developing country. The more current the technology that people have access to, the more effective they can become with its use.

Schools’ Access to ICTs (Stage 3)

Under Soviet rule in the 1960’s, the importance of computer technology was recognized and computers were introduced into general education with the aim of achieving technological breakthroughs for the USSR. This was stressed through the development of information and computer literacy in all general school graduates. At the beginning of the 1990’s up to 28% of schools were equipped with computers, mainly of Soviet make3.1. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced decentralization and underfunding in their education system. Higher education at the university level was the only area to still move forward in the use of modern ICTs. Most of this was due to an uncoordinated division of responsibilities between regional and federal levels. In the late 1990’s, Russia was experiencing an increase in the student to computer ratio in schools since investments in technology had not flowed down into lower levels of education3.1.
Like many developing countries, Russia is experiencing a digital divide. The two major sources of this inequality are income difference and population and geography differences between urban and rural areas. Children, whose parents are wealthy, have access to ICTs at a much younger age through the schools they’re able to attend and through their parents’ jobs. Some rural children live too far or are too poor to travel to schools, and some are even needed to help at home or in the fields, all of which deny them early interaction with ICTs. Proof of this comes from a Krasnoyarsk case study showing 30.4% of eleventh grade students have access to computers at home; 39.5% of these students are in urban areas, while 5.7% come from rural homes3.1.
Since 2003, Russia has been reforming its education system to meet the needs of the country’s evolving economic structure with its changing focus on knowledge creation, processing and use; this is being referred to as the information or knowledge economy. The public sector is working in line with two presidential initiatives for installing modern computers in urban and rural areas. The goal being to integrate Russia into the community of developed countries. The federal government’s two key policy programs are the Development of the Common Education Information Space for 2001-2006 (E-Education) started in August of 2001, and Electronic Russia for 2002-2010 (E-Russia), started in January of 20023.1. Russia is also currently working on changing laws that may give private enterprises more incentive to donate ICT equipment to secondary and primary level schools, as currently private sector donors must pay taxes on gifts to schools. Thus far, the government’s efforts have lowered the student to computer ratio in rural areas from 193 to 51 students per up-to-date computer, and 188 to 46 students per up-to-date computer in urban areas (reported in the Krasnoyarsk region)3.1.

Enhancing Education with ICTs (Stage 2.5)

Russia has a centrally regulated curriculum that does not include provision for ICTs to be used in conjunction with academic courses. All schools teaching with ICTs refer to it as a separate course called informatics, and in some cases, teach the course without modern computers or without computers at all. The informatics course is still not a fully recognized part of the compulsory curriculum and its educational content is an issue. Schools do not receive financial support for ICT related expenses, thus creating issues in financing equipment and the necessary supplies to keep these courses current3.1.
There have been several private sector initiatives aimed at raising educational funding for ICTs. In 2000, the Yukos Oil Company started a teacher-training program whose main goal was introducing Russian teachers to ICTs and the effective use of the Internet3.1. The Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) started an Internet portal project in 2001 (Auditorium.ru Portal Initiative). Their main goal is to support education and science in the social and humanitarian field by improving accessibility of education-related information through the use of IT. The Portal will create a complex database of digital resources with free public access via the Internet. This project will benefit higher education the most, however one of the most important effects is that any region in Russia will have access to this information through the portal site www.auditorium.ru3.1. The portal is currently under construction and is not linked with the Ministry of Education programs or with E-Libraries; a program aimed a digitizing essential resources for students.
In another effort to make education available to rural areas, a Moscow-based nonprofit education institution has started the Teleschool project (www.teleschool.ru/faq.html) in an effort to create a distance education system. For a cost of US$500 per student a year, the program uses TV learning and standard textbooks, and offers state diplomas of general education. By 2001, there was no regular teaching in progress, and it was still lacking a full listing of courses to be digitized. The program’s high cost also may lower its acceptance by low-income students, many of which live in rural areas.
Most recently, the World Bank approved a $100 million dollar loan on March 2nd, 2004 for the Russian government’s e-Learning Support Project. This project has three major phases: Learning Materials, Teachers Training in the Educational use of Information and Communication Technologies, and Development of a Network of Interschool Resource Centers 3.2. The first phase of the project is aimed at supporting the education modernizations goals of the program, which will help improve quality, efficiency, and accessibility to technology for lower level educational institutions. The result should be in the efficient use of digital learning resources and electronic tools in the schools participating in the project3.2. This project is a major step ahead for the Russian government in their e-initiatives.

Developing the ICT Workforce (Stage 3.5)

Russia has a natural wealth of talent reaching back to their technological developments of the 1960’s and Cold War era. Russia still however faces a huge challenge equipping its citizens with the necessary skills and resources to compete in a modern information economy. The country must deal not only with the lack of available finances, but it’s thinly spread population over its huge landmass. This creates much difficulty in setting up effective connectivity of digital networks. The majority of Russia’s technically savvy workers from the Cold War era have had to refocus their efforts outside of the defense industry. Currently many of these workers have been employed in the telecommunications sector in Russia’s effort to upgrade and better develop their current infrastructure. Also since the early 1990’s Russia’s software industry began rapidly expanding creating new jobs and although this was drastically slowed by the recession in 1998, it has been steadily growing again over the past few years.
Russia’s universities and higher educational institutes continue to produce well educated graduates, however the underfunding in the country’s primary and secondary school systems since the collapse of the Soviet Union has affected the talent pool these schools pull from and thus send into the workforce. During the Soviet period Russia was rated as a perfectly educated country. Since its collapse lack of funding and standardization in education is now turning the country into a poorly educated nation3.3. As a result, Universities are turning out less qualified graduates in fewer quantities.

Recommendations:

Russia has done a lot in terms of reform to move forward since the collapse of the USSR and its financial recession. The government is working to put policies in place to ensure lower level schools and rural areas have adequate access to computer networks and ICTs. The E-Russia and E-Education policies are very bold step forward to ensure the country has a long-term plan in place for developing. More focus needs to be put on training teachers with modern technology and incentives need to be provided to organizations for donating both equipment and training to schools due to Russia’s limited ICT resources. This training is very important in secondary and primary schools to ensure that students graduate with adequate skills to function in Russia’s developing information economy. Also due to the problems Russia faced in the midst of the USSR’s collapse, an effort needs to be put in place to help standardize technology throughout the country’s schools to ensure regions are not developing unevenly.