ETU “LETI” Online Courses Won the EdCrunch Awards 2020

The annual international contest of open online courses EdCrunch Award announced the results within the #EdCrunch-2020 conference, the largest educational event in Europe, which takes place for the seventh year in a row and brings together leading experts in the field of educational technology. The conference was held online on December 8-10, with 150 sessions and 10,000 online listeners.

EDCRUNCH brings together leading education experts: teachers and educators, heads of schools and universities, investors, entrepreneurs, and all those who care about the future of education. National Research Technological University “MISIS” and NTI University “20.35” organized the event with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and Mail.ru Group.

In the Universities track of #EdCrunch-2020, participants considered the new agenda of higher education and discussed the digital learning formats, the introduction of personalized educational paths and adaptive learning, academic mobility, and the establishment of global campuses and university consortiums. Experts from the ministry and rectors of the country’s leading universities discussed topics related to technological shift and training for the digital economy.

Key speakers at the conference were Robert Sapolsky, a distinguished neuroendocrinologist, professor of biology and neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University; Salman Khan, a founder of the nonprofit Khan Academy; Ben Nelson, a founder and CEO of Minerva, an alternative education project; Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA); Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera; Richard Culatta, CEO of International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE); Rose Luckin, President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (IAIED); George Siemens, a creator of the world’s first MOOC; and other foreign and Russian experts in the field of education.

As part of the #EdCrunch-2020 conference, the traditional International EdCrunch Award competition for online courses took place. Its goal is to improve the quality of the education system by introducing the best e-learning technologies. This year, more than 100 online courses developed by educational institutions, companies, freelancers, and teachers from Russia and other countries took part in the competition. Organizers divided the contest into three main categories and several sponsor categories, including:

Best Online Course on a Digital Platform
Best Online Course According to Consumers (student jury)
Best Off-Platform Online Course
Best Online Course in Engineering Education (sponsor category)
The Professional Foreign Language online course by Yulia Filippova, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages, and Georgy Petrenko, a senior lecturer of the same department, won in the main category called “Best Course According to Consumers.” This course is a part of Russia’s first 100% online master’s degree program in Autonomous Service Robots that started this fall. It is available to all users of our LETIteach platform. Besides, Yulia Filippova is currently conducting professional development in English for university teachers, in which they study the online course as a supplement to classes and webinars.

“The main difficulty in creating an online course, in my opinion, is the need to look at the material from the students’ point of view, to present the necessary information in the most accessible, complete, but concise manner. Many, if not all, teachers have difficulty working in front of the camera. Even a lecturer with ample experience in working with an audience may become confused in front of the camera without the usual response from students.”

Yulia Filippova, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages
Another success of our university at the EdCrunch Award was the Development of Pattern Recognition Systems for Autonomous Service Robots course by Karina Mokleva, an engineer at the Department of Automation and Control Processes. It received a diploma for second place in the sponsorship nomination brought by the eNano organization titled “Best Online Course in Engineering Education.” This course is also part of the online master’s program in Autonomous Service Robots.