Every year, Gartner and IDC analysts identify global trends that will changeTechnology Landscape
So, according to the recently publishedAccording to Gartner research, cloud infrastructures in education are already successfully reaching a productivity plateau. And such trends as the introduction of digital university models, gamification and the acceleration of the introduction of new digital products emphasize the depth of the transformation processes taking place in education around the world.
Moreover, in Russia digitalizationeducational process and guaranteeing equal access to education, including through distance learning and cloud infrastructures, is becoming a key focus of national policy. Thus, within the framework of the Education project, it is planned to allocate more than 79 billion rubles for the digitalization of schools until 2024.
However, the pandemic has shown that realitythe Russian segment of education does not entirely correspond to the declared development strategies. Schools and universities were faced with several technological challenges at once with the transition to a distance learning format: peak loads on information systems, storage and availability of educational content, technical and, no less important, methodological support for teachers, the search for control tools (proctoring) for conducting the Unified State Exam and other exams. Educational institutions find themselves in search of a fundamentally new approach to the IT industry, which will increase the speed of response to environmental changes.
Trend No. 1. Educational institutions and services are increasingly storing a wide variety of data in the cloud
Application of cloud technologies in education -they are not only electronic diaries and online platforms. Russian schools are increasingly using services for the joint storage and use of educational materials, homework, scientific and creative projects. Cloud technologies are used to control the knowledge of students: online tests and even control exams are now held even in the most remote corners of the country. Interaction planning services are no longer limited to the school schedule on the school website: students and teachers are increasingly using platform cloud solutions to organize extracurricular activities and activities. Today, on domestic cloud educational platforms, a student can find almost any information necessary for learning. For example, the catalogs of the Russian Electronic School contain over 120,000 unique problems, thematic courses, video tutorials, tasks for self-testing, a catalog of museums, films and music concerts.
In addition, students and teachers used toused social networks and other third-party services for communication on an ongoing basis. They can now communicate with each other using ecosystem platform solutions. This makes it easier for students to communicate with each other and with the teacher, and also creates a controlled and safe environment for young people.
Trend No. 2. Due to the flexibility of the educational process, workloads are constantly changing
If the company's business is based onweb applications, situations periodically arise associated with a surge in seasonal activity. Uncontrolled growth and increase in traffic occurs at any time. If a company is engaged in e-commerce, the surge in traffic increases on the eve of the holidays; if the business is involved in organizing events, then a surge in traffic occurs at the time of the approaching event. The same thing happens with educational platforms.
Unsurprisingly, during temporary peakworkloads cloud becomes a necessary tool. The scale of the increase in the load on educational platforms during the pandemic can hardly be overestimated: in China, 278 million schoolchildren and students switched to the remote learning format, and in Russia, the share of teachers who at least started using online resources in the classroom reached 85%.
Instead of spending money onown equipment, schools, universities, online platforms use cloud services, reducing costs and controlling resources during periods of stress. In addition, infrastructure in the cloud scales on demand, allowing you to grow or release resources as needed.
Trend No. 3. Teams for transformation and IT support of educational institutions automate the distance learning process
But not in all educational institutionsthere are departments for the implementation of digital technologies. And there are more and more tasks for automating processes. Most universities primarily automate financial, economic and personnel activities. But systems for managing the educational process, e-learning, document management, library automation and remote work with students are also in demand. For example, the Novosibirsk State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (Sibstrin) has developed its own BigBlueButton system - a free webinar room with no time or number of users.
Leading universities are building up development teams and creating projects using cloud technologies for various reasons:
1. For the possibility of integration into the external ecosystem, which is being formed, among other things, with the support of the Ministry of Education.
2. Recently, the requirements on the part of students and schoolchildren to the educational process have changed a lot, and the solutions available on the market either do not have time and require improvements, or you have to develop solutions yourself.
Trend No. 4. Clouds may provide new analytics tools to improve the quality of lessons and assess the effectiveness of work
One of the industries that has gone through the cloud transformation is business intelligence (BI).
A business intelligence implementation primarily simplifieswork with big data. Modern cloud storage allows you to centrally store all data regardless of scale, as well as provide detailed analytical information to all users. With the help of services, a business can analyze structured and unstructured data, integrate data from different sources, working with them on a single platform. This provides new opportunities, allows the company to become data-oriented: to make informed and correct decisions based on information, not assumptions.
Big data is used in a wide variety ofsectors of the economy: from telecommunications, healthcare and the financial sector to trade and logistics. The education industry is no exception: today schools and universities around the world are actively using the accumulated data to develop and optimize the educational process.
For example, American startup Apex Learningdeveloped a cloud-based platform for more flexible and fractional tracking of student progress, using big data for individual adaptation of the educational trajectory. And the cloud-based solution Naviance, which makes recommendations for choosing a specialty based on the success of students in mastering the school curriculum, allowed a number of Philadelphia colleges last year to increase the proportion of students who successfully completed educational programs by 67%.
Trend No. 5. ML can help solve the problem of checking homework
Through machine learning (ML) universities and schoolssolve the most non-standard tasks. With the help of ML algorithms, universities, for example, are introducing a recommendation system that helps students choose educational courses and enroll in them. The input data are the learning outcomes of previous students for a specific course, the performance of each student, and information about students with similar profiles and interests. Based on the analysis of this information, the system selects an individual educational trajectory.
Machine learning can also be applied tocreating a multitasking learning system, where algorithms predict the probability of a student's correct answer based on his previous behavior in the game educational process. At the same time, the teacher can receive notifications if the student requires additional instructions.
Machine learning is also beginning to be used forautomation of checking homework and competition works. For example, recently Yandex.Cloud became a technology partner of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) project World AI & Data Challenge. Our managed database and machine learning services were used to automate the testing of “Total Dictation”. Of course, this story is not about checking the semantics of the text, but about algorithms calculating specific correspondences in spelling and punctuation.
Trend No. 6. Clouds - a boost for the development of Smart Campus concepts as an element of the “Digital University”
The concept of smart campuses and classrooms is based onwidespread use of automation of environmental management by collecting indicators from various sensors and metering devices - on the basis of IoT technology, a network of devices and devices is created that track various indicators: the presence of air in classrooms, temperature, light brightness and others, facilitating the educational process. The educational environment can include school computers, smart boards and projectors, personal devices that will be linked together. The smart class is able to identify students, recording their attendance, activity, if necessary, turn on and off devices, integrating them into the educational process. It is also possible to automatically send assignments, additional sources and literature that will help in the learning process. Standards for the construction of smart buildings, campuses and classrooms in conjunction with the IoT, often used in the construction of corporate universities and business schools, are gradually spreading to a wider university segment.
The ability of cloud environments to integrate smartengineering systems, providing additional services to both service organizations, university management, and, of course, students and teachers, significantly speed up the process of building a digital university.
Six largest universities are leading in Russianmarket to strategize and build smart universities. This year, uniform basic standards will be agreed upon and the massive introduction of elements and individual solutions will begin. We believe that clouds, among other things, will help to make this process smoother, faster, and simplify the introduction of new elements.
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