=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3057/paper24.pdf
|storemode=property
|title=Formation of Modern Open Educational Space
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3057/paper24.pdf
|volume=Vol-3057
|authors=Oksana K. Mineva,Elina V. Polyanskaya
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==Formation of Modern Open Educational Space==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3057/paper24.pdf
Formation of Modern Open Educational Space
Oksana K. Mineva 1 Elina V. Polyanskaya,1
1
Astrakhan State University, Tatishcheva Street, 20 а, Astrakhan, Russia
Abstract
Rapid technological progress demands changing the traditional model of modern open
educational space, which will meet the challenges of the digital era of the university community
transformation. Within the traditional model of open education, there is a significant gap
between the real sector of the economy and the innovations market. Thus, the educational
programs offered by the university, as well as the graduates entering the labor market are not
competitive. One of the key disadvantages of the current model is the fact that education is
now regarded as a space where the specialists are trained at the request of an abstract customer
through Federal State Educational Standards (FSES). FSES 3++ standards will not be able to
bridge the existing gap with the real requests for the current competencies of the university
graduates because the competencies of the professional standards are often focused on very
general and out-of-date requests of their developers. The general disadvantage of the traditional
model is training specialists for the existing jobs. Thus, the added value of such education is
very low and as a result, there is a low level of the graduate's employment and a need for their
external “retraining” to achieve the requested competencies. The purpose of our research was
to develop the Open University model in which the cooperation of all the participants of the
educational process will focus on training a unique specialist whose education will be
performed by a researcher – innovator. To achieve that it is necessary to change the whole
educational paradigm and to train specialists not for the existing jobs (initial professional
training) but for the newly appearing technologically advanced jobs which may not yet be
numerous in the real sector of the economy. That demands changes in the modern university
ecosystem when the teacher shifts from being a mere transmitter of explicit knowledge to being
a researcher-innovator. It is not possible without reconstructing the supporting infrastructure
of the open educational space.
Keywords 1
Unique specialist, researcher-innovator, open educational space, “Open University”, STEM,
STEAM, digital platform
1. Introduction
The digital reality made it possible to shift from the elite model of university education “University
3.0” to the socially-oriented model “University 4.0”. Its main purpose is to implement the third mission
of the university and to increase the innovative sensibility and business activity of the population.
According to the contemporary authors (L.M. Andruhina, A.A. Verbitskiy, K.Y. Komarov, A.S.
Ogonovskaya, A.-M. Rodríguez-García, and others) [1,2,3,4,5], open education should be understood
as broadly as possible since it is not only a new innovative environment and infrastructure but also a
new targeting system. And the development of the innovative potential of the individual and all the
subjects of education becomes the main target of this system. Unlike the traditional closed educational
spaces where the whole history of university education from the times of Platonic Academy (386 B.C.)
Proceedings of VI International Scientific and Practical Conference Distance Learning Technologies (DLT–2021), September 20-22,
2021, Yalta, Crimea
EMAIL: okmineva@rambler.ru (Oksana K. Mineva), epolyanskaya@gmail.com (Elina V. Polyanskaya),
ORCID: 0000-0002-1830-784X (Oksana K. Mineva), 0000-0002-6741-9979 (Elina V. Polyanskaya),
©️ 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
211
up to the beginning of the 20th century was based on the principle of interactive communication
“Teacher-Student”, the open educational systems are not limited to two subjects of the interaction and
intra-university infrastructure. Traditional closed educational space is focused on the formation of hard
and soft skills.
2. Digital Platforms and Apps
Digital applications and platforms are filling the educational space, and the educational process
itself means the creation of virtual reality and immersion into it, participation in the creation and
foundation of new practices. According to V.S. Efimov and A.V. Lapteva, “…any participant of the
educational process in University 4.0 “is a subject of the search, trial activity, of “the game with the
limits”, of conceiving and implementing “the created worlds”… University 4.0 should become a place
of mass production of scientists, engineers – the possessors of the scientific mentality, actors of the
industrial revolutions” [6].
O. Scharmer and K. Kaufer suppose that education in the University 4.0 will be developed in global
(allocated) classrooms, innovative hubs, and the new model of the university is designed to provide
common competence in vertical development that means the ability to comprehend and to improve
surrounding systems [6, 7].
Generation Z is the major consumer in the field of education is inherently digitally competent, and
the educational space openness turns out to be its naturally determined transformation [8].
The open educational space increases the number of collaborating parties, enhances their
cooperation, development of different communities of practice, network structures.
Figure 1: The basic scheme of a modern digital platform
Firstly, the open educational space should connect teachers, representatives of industrial partners,
students, and society to achieve a particular innovative (production) objective or to tackle a problem for
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collective work, an innovative product creation. The open educational space should be a hybrid
consisting of digital apps and platforms and traditional material space of the university [9, 10].
3. The Open University Model
We propose the Open University model that displays a new paradigm of the open educational space
within modern digital reality. The model implementation requires the industrial partners’ more
extensive involvement in the process of the model content creation and the innovative network
structures support. In our opinion, a special emphasis should be made on pedagogical practices
transformation, particularly on transition from dialogue-based communication to project-oriented one
in cooperation with students and on the transformation of the role of a teacher who is to become a
researcher-innovator. The Open University model is aimed not only at unique specialists’ training (in
contrast with specialists’ basic training within the framework of the closed educational space) but also
at making it possible for the University to secure its position as a territory of development of, at least,
regional entrepreneurial and lean mindset.
Figure 2 shows the Open University model.
Figure 2: The Open University model
The proposed trends of higher education modernization (basic disciplines transformation) in the
context of the digital educational environment will result in the transition of specialists’ basic
educational training mainly to Artificial Intelligence by 2030 [11, 12, 13].
We believe that within the next few years the emphasis of the Ministry of Science and Higher
Education of the Russian Federation regulatory function should shift from submission of admission
quotas (AQ) proportionally to population basis (to provide access to higher education) to direct
correlation with future demands of real economy companies in technologically advanced workplaces
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operators allocated through target contractual training. As for labor market development, it should be
carried out through stimulating the creation of new technologically advanced workplaces.
The first two years of basic educational training form the basis of the specialists’ worldview through
the list of subjects, which are the most common for all the training programs. We consider that these
subjects may include History, Philosophy, Mathematics, Economics, Law, Psychology, IT, Foreign
language, etc.
Professionalization in the process of bachelor training begins with the third year of study through
special subjects that form the professional worldview of the student. It makes the learning process
hybrid.
Artificial intelligence begins to interact with all the subjects of the process in common educational
activities within the digital platform.
The main tendency of the radical modernization of the entire educational process at the Open
University should be the diffusion of university science into the innovation market to implement
subsequently a project-based training for students. Within the future technology trends, the teacher
(whose role is fundamentally changing from a transmitter of explicit knowledge into a researcher-
innovator who forms and implements innovative projects) involves students in working on specific
projects. This will become a real basis for the formation of individual educational trajectories for
students as well as the basis for introducing new technologies in the industrial partners’ activities.
In our opinion, such modernization of the educational process will increase the demand for
educational and research services (including those with full compensation for training costs) in new,
future-oriented professions and technologies, the trends of which are defined in the Atlas of New
Professions and the Atlas of Future Technologies. These trends have shaped more with the convergence
of the university and business community.
To our mind, after the bachelor's degree studying, the result will be the best if the traditional control
of the assimilation of the educational program will be transformed into the presentation of new Startup
or Spin-off companies. This will exclude the defense of the graduation thesis demonstrating the skills
of working with explicit knowledge sources considering as obsolete, and will demonstrate the
individual entrepreneurial potential of the most motivated students.
Students, who do not have the ability to innovative and entrepreneurial activity, should be provided
with a confirmation of their level of preparation for Federal State Educational Standards through the
most impersonal professional exam (possibly by analogy with the Unified State Exam at Russian
schools). In any case, as the result, we obtain a Unique specialist who has gained not only general
professional competencies but also knowledge of the production and technological processes of a
particular industrial partner.
Master's degree programs cannot and should not be designed for a mass of students. They should
become unique and assume even greater professional specialization of the student, who is fully focused
on promoting the Start-up company and launching it in the market. A relatively small part of MA
students will prepare themselves for the work in universities (including through further training in
postgraduate studies).
To continuously improve the educational and research innovative processes in the Open University
model, it is planned to create an independent system for evaluating the effectiveness and productivity
of the individual trajectory of the student. The auditors will be industrial partners, whose educational
program is aimed at solving technological problems, teachers-researchers (for the continuous
implementation of the Kaizen principle for the internal educational and research innovative ecosystem
within the university), other interested parties, and the student him/herself. The collection of statistical
data on the effectiveness of individual educational programs, the validation of the results will become
a reliable tool for managing the scientific and pedagogical design of the program. The frequency of
such an audit should be undertaken at least once a year to make possible practical changes to the
individual student training plan.
A special big challenge for the Open University should be the orientation towards a smooth transition
to the graduation of not just a Unique specialist, but a specialist who has a basic understanding of STEM
processes.
The abbreviation STEM was introduced in science by the staff of the National Science Foundation
in 2001 to denote the educational paradigm. STEM training implies studying technology, mathematics,
engineering, and natural sciences, along with the individualization of personal professional
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development trajectory. According to research by European Schoolnet2, today 80% of countries
identify STEM education as a priority of national education and national security, which, according to
preliminary calculations, with the involvement of 1% of STEM specialists in the national economy
gives the country's GDP growth by $50 billion per year [14, 15]. Today the leaders of STEM education
are the USA, Israel, China, and the United Kingdom.
Today STEM education is implemented through a triad:
- personalization of the student's educational trajectory;
- project thinking and teamwork;
- hybrid educational format.
In the first stage of implementing STEM educational processes, Open University can use the
materials posted on open educational platforms Coursera, EdX, Udemy. Later, when it develops its
cases, Open University can post them on its educational digital platform.
However, the combination of four academic and professional disciplines in natural,
technological, engineering sciences, and mathematics aimed at training specialists with a new type of
thinking (STEM) is considered to be flawed more and more often and futurists see the future in the
combination of five disciplines - STEAM (+ art). It is possible within the framework of the Open
University, where each training trajectory is a new educational, scientific and pedagogical masterpiece.
Russia has a unique document, the Atlas of new professions; among them, you can find a GMO
farmer, creative state trainer, science artist, etc. State educational standards for these professions do not
exist. Open University has the right to issue its non-state diploma in the professions of the future, as
soon as individual educational programs are ready and approved by the auditor. In the 21st century,
these educational programs are becoming more and more STEM-oriented.
While implementing such an educational paradigm in the “Open University” model, each
educational institution becomes a place of forming a catalog of STEM cases, which later can be:
- unified and professional standard for training a STEM specialist of the future can be created;
- state standards of training specialists can be applied and their content can be quickly updated,
preventing their obsolescence;
- professional skills can be expanded to lower levels of education (kindergarten, school,
college);
- open educational space can be filled with modern content.
As a result, leaving the Open University, a graduate gets two diplomas – a traditional state one
(in compliance with the requirements of state educational standards) and a non-state professional
development document (obtained within the framework of the Open University model, developed by
the STEM ideology).
4. Conclusions
The Open University model expands the opportunities to form a Unique specialist, for the number
of incoming innovative requests to the industrial partners from the innovations market increases
considerably. Kaizen principle is being launched in respect to educational and research innovative
processes, real, but not “virtual” individualization of educational trajectories is taking place.
Alongside preserving the balance of professional education within the current state educational
standards, STEAM model of specialists training will be introduced to increase their competitiveness in
the labor market of the future.
Industrial partners entering the orbit of the Open University will be incited to technically refit their
production facilities.
The state will be able to increase the added value of education owing to “producing” Unique
specialists ready for work at technologically advanced jobs.
This may significantly slow down the rate of degradation of working population competencies, for
the retraining programs, that universities will draw up for them, will be at most reconciled with the real
needs of the labor market.
The development of educational standards by universities within STEAM model of education will
enable Russia to create its catalog of cases on different areas of modernization of technologies and
industrial markets.
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According to the authors, the Open University model implementation will transform universities
into the center of introducing innovations and territories development, a system of generation of new
businesses, new markets.
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