Education

It was back into the summer of 2018 when Dr. Hans de Wit, a renowned authority on global higher education, came up with a call for essays on the achievements and failures of academic internationalization over the past quarter-century to be featured in University World News. Irina Shcheglova, researcher at the IOE Center for the Sociology of Higher Education, was only too enthralled to take up this challenge.

This February, the OECD Headquarters in Paris welcomed a premier cohort of educational experts from the EU, the USA, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Russia, etc. for a global forum to discuss findings from OECD’s large-scale project that analyzes how the landscapes of educational innovations have been evolving across 40 countries during the past 10 years.

On December 9–10, Hong Kong hosted the 2018 events of the Yidan Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious awards that recognizes unparalleled contribution to education research and development.

IOE doctoral student Irina Dvoretskaya, who has concentrated most of her research on topics of digital transformation in secondary education, has recently completed her PhD internship with the Centre for Research in IT in Education (CRITE) in Dublin, the Republic of Ireland. During her stay at CRITE, Irina was focused on exploring how Irish schools from various socioeconomic settings put to use the potential of modern ICT to make a difference in school-age learning & development.

Igor Chirikov, Academic Supervisor at the IOE Center for Higher Education Sociology, is shortly to commence his term with UC Berkeley (California, the USA) as Academic Director for a major international study, Student Experience in the Research University (SERU).

The first meeting of the IOE Visiting Committee, which includes six international experts in education from five countries alongside three Russian experts, was held on October 19–20. The Committee gave independent assessments with respect to multiple areas of the Institute's academic profile, which will serve as important groundwork for refining and reinforcing IOE’s Development Strategy through 2024.

A Cooperation Agreement has recently been signed between HSE and Politecnico di Milano (Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering) to jointly embark on a large-scale study titled, Efficiency, Performance and Impact of Higher Education Institutions (EPI). In accordance with the agreement, the IOE Laboratory for University Development will act as the principal R&D venue for this initiative, while Dr. Tommaso Agasisti, Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano and one of Europe's most renowned experts in education economics, will take up overall project supervision.

HSE Institute of Education and the Center for Strategic Research have come up with an all-round action plan for upgrading Russian education to bolster the country’s technological development and socio-economic growth.

IOE is soon to sign a Memorandum of Cooperation with Educational Testing Service, the world’s largest private organization in educational measurement and testing. During their recent visit to ETS Headquarters in Princeton (New Jersey, USA), IOE experts Elena Kardanova and Tatjana Kanonire met with their ETS colleagues to map out the overall scope of the upcoming cooperation and to negotiate preliminary plans in a number of specific areas.

Among an entire host of reinvigorating discussions that were featured at this year’s EdCrunch international conference, one topic that received special attention was how the ubiquitous digital move and Big Data can help advance education. Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE Rector and Academic Supervisor for Education, talked about online courses as a means to update the university curriculum and bring training in sync with the modern-day pace of life, student expectations and economic needs.