Information technology and education: The Ministry of Education and Science to unite online courses of leading universities in a single system

The Ministry of Education intends to establish a system of electronic education. It will bring together about a thousand multimedia courses created on the bases of the leading Russian universities. It will also contribute to the fight against low-quality distance education. This was stated by head of department Dmitry Livanov, Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Dmitry Livanov at the first meeting of the Board of Strategic Development and priority projects.

"In terms of higher education, we will create a domestic system of e-learning, which will include not less than one thousand of Open University courses and modules. It will be attended by leading Russian universities with mandatory involvement of employers in the formation of the content. This networking platform will provide access for our students to the best educational programs in the country, regardless of where the student is", - Livanov said. He stressed that it "will eliminate the practice of pseudo correspondence". According to the Minister, correspondence programs will be implemented on the basis of courses prepared by only the strongest Russian universities. 

Livanov also drew attention to the fact that Russia is far behind competitor countries on the proposal advanced online courses and distance education for modernization and Russian schoolchildren and students continue longer use by foreign educational resources. "We offer by 2020 to make a breakthrough in the domestic availability of digital educational resources at all levels of education and enter the global market of educational resources", - said the Minister.

In particular, in school education the Ministry proposes to link the new digital educational resources to the school program in order the teacher easy used these resources during lessons and planning.