Situation before quarantine

The importance to research the situation before the pandemic quarantine of 2020 is substantial for contemplation of a full picture of the advantages, disadvantages, and possible issues in digitalization in the sphere of higher education in Russia. To put it in another way it can help in creating a comparative analysis of changes that occurred during and after the virus and revealing ways of improvements. The analysis will be done based on a governmental report of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation which gathered data for 2019 and 2020 at five hundred eighty universities in the country. One hundred thirty professors, ten thousand nine hundred eighty-three students participated in interviews at the end of March 2020.

1.2.1.1 Internet penetration in Russia

The Russian Federation is country with a good level of development and most people are using digital devices in daily life. According to Statista, the population from 12 to 44 years

are advanced Internet users as the share of people who use the Internet in Russia is not lower than 90% of the total amount of people in these age categories. (see Fig. 1.) Also “the average age of first-year students was approximately 20-

24, and the current age is 17-21”. (Sommer, 2018) Undoubtedly, the main percentage of people in those age categories of those who are potential university students have digital devices and are able to apply them in daily life and theoretically for education purposes.

That allows supposing that the dominant number of Russian students were ready for the transaction to digital communication platforms in educational processes. However, the situation with professors can differ from students.

Figure 1. Share of population using the internet in Russia in December 2019, by age group (Statista, 2020)

Indeed, it is significant to look at the shares of people by age who are living in Russia in order to understand the percent of the young population who are the main part of those who are studying at universities. It allows making an analysis that the dominant part of the population is from 15 to 64 years who are in 66.75% from of demographic statistics from the total amount of people in Russia in 2019. (Statista, 2020) This age is the most suitable for studying and teaching at universities. It determines that the thesis is covering the biggest part of the population in the researched country. Another key point is that the percentage of Internet penetration and respectively usage of digital communication platforms are going down in conformity with age. However, the peak of the statistics is among those who have from 25 – 34 years and later there is percentage reduction. (see Fig.2.) Moreover, as it was mentioned before first-years students usually have 17-21 years and as a rule, the education at university takes from 4 to 6 years. (Sommer, 2018) As a result, students usually have from 17 to 26 years and people out of this age group were calculated in amount around 13-14 million in Russia. (see Fig.2.) According to World Bank, the Russian population was around 144.5 million at the end of 2018, which means that a comparatively high proportion of people are being considered in the paperwork. (World Bank, 2018) At the same time, the average age of professors at universities is higher than 67 years what also plays a

tremendous role in the analysis itself and in a transaction from offline to online model of education under coronavirus conditions. (ROI, 2016)

Figure 2. Male and female population in Russia by age (Jan,1.2020) (Statista, 2020)

1.2.1.2 The use of digital communication platforms by universities

With attention to the average age of a student, what means that he is in groups of the people with the highest numbers of users (see. Fig. 1 on p. X), and the professors whose average age is higher than 67 years and who are in the group with the lowest index. This statistic indicates that there is a disproportion of the Internet and digital communication platforms users. What is the most interesting is that the group who are responsible for teaching have less than 50 percent of the Internet users. Important to realize, that 60 percent of professors at universities said that they had no experience with teaching online classes.

(Minobrnauki.gov, 2020) Certainly, it was almost impossible to predict that the situation with coronavirus will occur and there was no possibility to create any special preparation for professors for future digital communication platforms usage. The most compelling evidence of not perfect readiness is that 3,2 out of 5 professors evaluated their abilities to use social networks. (Minobrnauki.gov, 2020) However, it does not look paradoxically as the average age of professors has not so big index of internet penetration.

At the beginning of 2019, there were only 14 universities where students had the possibility to study online without physical presence. (Chumak, 2019) The total number of universities is 741 in the Russian Federation. (Study in Russia, 2020) It means that only 1,8 percent of universities in a country had previous experience with online classes and usage of digital communication platforms in teaching people. Definitely, this number is not so high, but most of the universities started to use digital communication platforms long before coronavirus. To be more precise, those networks were used for uploading study materials, lections, books, and for communicating with students by answering their questions.

(Goryachev, 2015) Among such study platforms, there were Moodle, Edmodo, Blackboard, and others. (Goryachev, 2015) Nevertheless, most of the universities did not use any digital communication platforms at least for cooperation between students and professors. As a result, if students needed to contact a teacher they had to go to the university or ask for the private email of a professor.

Such disbalance exists partly due to lack of financial help at provincial universities or at universities that are not in top-ranking in Russia. (Borisova, 2017) Among top universities are MGIMO, HSE, BMSTU, SPbU, MSU, NSU, TSU, and others; most of them are located in Moscow (6 out of 10 universities in the top – ranking). (Top Universities, 2018) Those institutions are getting more government subsidies than others. (Borisova, 2017) As a consequence, they have more possibilities on procurement of new equipment, study courses for professors where they will get knowledge of how to use digital communication platforms or to buy access to well-known digital communication platforms for online education or integration students and professors. One of the brightest examples is MGIMO which is applying online sources in education. They provide access for their students and professors to a variety of libraries such as Book.ru, Znanium.com, and the University online library.

(MGIMO, 2020) Talking about social networks, the university gives access to the full version of Polycom, Zoom, Skype, and others what is required for collaboration with help of video conferences. (MGIMO, 2020) In this case, students and professors will accept the transition from offline to online model of education fast and easily as they had experience before.

Comparatively, another university which is not located in Moscow such as YSPU has no access to Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or any other social networks. (YSPU, 2020) However, they have some study laptops, access to the electronic study portal of the university, libraries, licenses of Microsoft Windows, and many others. (YSPU, 2020) Nevertheless, the accesses are only possible from some university’s classes and those laptops are suited at YSPU only. (YSPU, 2020)

A considerable number of universities in Russia are not located in Moscow or Saint Peterburg, they are not in top – rankings. As a result, they get fewer subsidies from the government, they have less motivation to develop, and they don’t have the opportunity to evolve from offline to online schools. In fact, there is high inequality in the development of universities’ digital education and usage of digital communication platforms for study purposes. What is more, geographical location also plays a big role in the development and application of new technologies, as it is in the case of MGIMO university in Russia. These factors influence the ability of students and professors to use digital communication platforms and adapt rapidly to remote collaboration with each other during coronavirus situation.