SCIENCE POPULARIZATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH ACTIVITIES: RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE

Science popularization and public outreach activities form the essential social function of the education. The educational products that are provided free of charge or for the low price for the customers are the main resource of implementation of the principles of Lifelong Learning for different income and age groups of population. It seems clear that the leading universities should act as leaders in the field of science popularization and development of public outreach activities. At the same time lots of other providers of popular-scientific services try to form intellectual content, organize free lectures and other events to popularize scientific and cultural values on the basis of modern electronic technologies. Among the most popular issues are so called soft skills (Communication, Leadership, Conflict Solving, etc.) that initially were included in some special disciplines and programs oriented on high-level managers (as Organizational Behavior) but further became attractive to individual customers irrespective of their professional status. Individual Financial planning and Financial Literacy are also the subjects that move from the special professional areas to the spheres of interest of common people.

So, it looks crucial to study modern experience, supply and trends of development of the educational products in this sphere.The article discusses the modern Russian experience on the basis of the results of the original research conducted by the authors from Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia).

The development of the principles of Lifelong Learning and Science popularization in the form of educational products with open access helps to reach important socio-economic goals for Russian people:popularization of Science and highlighting of population, particularly young people towards scientific activities; informing people in the popular form about the scientific achievements, new products and technologies in industry, economics, finance, social communication, etc.

The analysis of the popular-scientific educational product is based on the authors’ prerequisites that this product is massive, oriented on people of different age, professions, and hobbies. It is important to define the utilities and motives that push the learners towards attending these events or using educational content as well as to study the characteristics of the demand of different groups of customers. To solve this task the authors conducted the cabinet study and a survey of the random group of respondents. The main providers of popular-scientific education and their products were analyzed.The authors have divided all massive of popular-scientific educational products into 6 main groups: universities, research institutions, foundations, museums, libraries, “new forms”. In each group several subjects were defined and each subject was evaluated according to the indicators, including:subject of educational market and its communication channels with the customers; essence of educational content;lecturers, etc.

As a result of the study there were determined the leaders in the sphere of popularization of science in Russian education, indicators of the competitive advantages of providers from the points of content and forms of provision of their services and products as well as the placement of educational providers in Russia.The perspective trends of development of Lifelong Learning technologies in the sphere of Science popularization were defined.