Abstract:

The relevance of this study is due to the rapid changes in social life, including education, caused by the evolving processes of globalization, informatization and digitalization. Russia as part of the international community is on its way to a digital economy. One of the tasks of digital transformation is aimed at creating proper conditions for training competent professionals able to meet the requirements of the new era. Thus, universities face the need to change the traditional pedagogical paradigm for a new technology-based one. Open Educational Resources (OER) seem to be able to push this process.

The term "Open Educational Resources" was first coined at the UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the impact of open courseware for higher education in developing countries to describe the new global phenomenon of sharing online educational resources among stakeholders openly and for free. OERs are known today as teaching, learning and research materials normally freely available for educational use to any interested party including teachers, students or self-learners. The pioneers of OER insisted on their accessibility for anyone aimed at “the free exchange of ideas and knowledge”; they also developed five core rules of open publishing to follow: reuse, redistribute, revise, remix and retain.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing trends in the digitalization of education and identify the applicable strategies and forms of OER deployment on university e-platforms in Russia. The idea behind this paper is to analyze the history and impacts of OER on educational process worldwide. Russia, being a UNESCO member state, supports the strategies and initiatives of the organization in its attempt to promote OER and provide multiple quality learning modes and opportunities at lower cost to anyone, anywhere and anytime. A wide range of OER online formats allows diverse options.

The methodology of the work is based on the theory of connectivism and communicative, collaborative and competence-based approaches. During the empirical stage, the authoring course named “English for Media & Journalism” for university students has been designed and successfully implemented. The course was deployed on the e-platform of Kazan University (Russia) and though it was mainly addressed to humanity students, the authors followed all rules of OER publishing and made it open and free to any stakeholder. In its form, the course resembles xMOOC and has all necessary components. The students were later interviewed what they really liked about the course. They highlighted such benefits as easy access to learning, habitual Internet environment, ability to self-modify course materials, multidisciplinary character of the educational content and cost savings. The results of the work may be interesting to teachers, educators and e-learners who support innovations and feel free to create, collaborate, communicate both online and offline.

Keywords:

University, students, pedagogical design, course, open educational resources (OER), learning outcomes, humanity.