HSE University and Skyeng Start Exploring Online Education Together
The HSE Institute of Education has opened a Joint Department with Skyeng to create faster and more effective tools in online education, research, and specialist training in the field of educational technology.
The joint department will unite the efforts of researchers from HSE University’s Institute of Education along with practitioners and analysts from Russia's largest online school. Relying on Skyeng’s databases and developments, they plan to find and scale solutions that will be available to all participants in the edtech industry and make online learning more effective and faster.
Isak Froumin, Head of HSE University’s Institute of Education, recalled that cooperation between the Institute of Education and Skyeng began long before the creation of the department.
Isak Froumin, Head, Institute of Education, HSE University
Back in autumn, the school's team launched a course on learning analytics for students of our master’s programme in ‘Evidence-Based Education Development’ and the Doctoral School of Education. The course is based entirely on Skyeng cases. This year we are planning new joint educational projects, and not only within the framework of master's degree programmes. The range of the online school's interests is constantly expanding. It is not only English, but also Maths and additional education, which means that the department's agenda and the content of its courses at the Institute of Education will also expand. The company awards scholarships to several of our graduate students, provides co-directors for their projects, and supports our educational innovation competition. Undoubtedly, the joint department will occupy a strategically important place in our structure, academics, and research, and become another platform for the development of evidence-based online education.
As part of its cooperation with HSE University, Skyeng is submitting a database for research, which has few analogues even on a global scale. For several years, the company has recorded more than 200 parameters from each lesson — they relate to content, student and teacher behaviour, communication strategies, pedagogical design, and more. Studies, which will be developed by the department's team, will help determine what affects student progress, motivation to study, engagement, and ability to adapt to online formats, as well as what determines the effectiveness of online courses and how it can be influenced. The centres and laboratories of HSE University’s Institute of Education have gained extensive experience in evaluating the effectiveness of innovations in education, and have proposed the ‘gold standard’ of evidence in social research.
This experience will make it possible to identify the best tools and practices and disseminate them on a Russian and global scale.
Mikhail Sverdlov, Skyeng Content Director, Head of Skyeng Joint Department
Over the past two years, we have invested a tremendous amount of resources in internal research, and we have tested existing approaches in pedagogy and andragogy for years. It has been more than a year since we opened our anonymised data to researchers. A logical step was to create a joint department together with HSE University’s Institute of Education, because we believe that the industry can only be developed together, by enriching each other in competencies.
HSE University’s undergraduate and graduate students will not only be able to draw on a unique body of data in their research, but also gain insight into working in the EdTech industry. The work will be conducted in constant contact with the practitioners of the online school. Thanks to internships with the Skyeng team, students will have the opportunity to expand their professional networks, outline future partners and employers, as well as start a career at the company itself.