Diploma in a month: can online courses replace universities

In the new episode of the podcast “What has changed?” we discuss what tools have become available to modern educational institutions and how online platforms are useful for learning

Edition guests:

Marina Kharahordina is the head of the methodological department at Skillbox. Marina told how online learning platforms calculate the effectiveness of the educational process and how to correctly choose your educational trajectory.

Anna Zavalei is the Head of the Department for Online Learning at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. Anna explained how universities combine online and offline approaches to education and why deepfakes and artificial intelligence will never replace a teacher.

Conversation highlights

Anna believes that education is conservative. It is not worth talking about the emergence of new forms of the educational process, if only because the characteristics of a person for study remain the same. You can learn something in an active way, being fully involved in the discussion and the educational process, you can be a passive listener, or you can apply a know-how approach and learn something in the process of being active.

The only thing that changes over time is technological capabilities, so the main question is how flexible and innovative we are to combine progress with old pedagogical techniques.

Marina explained that online platforms are just one of the possible tools that allows you to deliver content in a different way. Potentially the most effective is blended learning, when information can be obtained using any of the proposed tools.

Deepfake and artificial intelligence will not replace a teacher, Anna believes. This is because most people choose a course based on who is reading it. Of course, there is information that anyone can tell. However, in cases where expertise and personal experience are required, a deepfake is unlikely to be of any help.

Anna explained that it is unlikely that state accreditation mechanisms will ever cease to operate in education. In some professions – for example, in medicine, jurisprudence and government positions – it is definitely impossible to get through without formal confirmation of one’s competencies.

Marina said that, in principle, the choice of a learning path should be approached consciously. A good option is to explore all possible ways to get a profession and compare their effectiveness. Find out what requirements are imposed on specialists in this field, communicate with those who have been working there for a long time.

You can’t be completely sure that educational videos on TikTok are free of errors, says Anna. Perhaps they are relevant in the study of some everyday practices: cooking, knitting, collecting shelves, but for what requires a theoretical base, it is better to go to courses or to a university.

It seems that many subjects in schools are useless and can be avoided by resorting to “quick” content. But this is not at all true: in fact, studying, for example, long theorems is very useful for building up certain neural connections in the brain that affect the ability to build logical sequences.

In addition, it is important to take into account that additional subjects in schools and universities focus not only on providing certain knowledge, but also on developing thinking and communication skills, broadening one’s horizons, says Marina.

Anna also emphasizes that, perhaps, to study, for example, a foreign language at the A1 level, it will be enough to take a small online course. But still, you should not take the successful completion of the course for some statistical data, because then such factors as student motivation, their language knowledge and preferences, and social background remain aside. In some cases, a teacher is indispensable.