Swiss Quality Distance Education for Ukraine
14.7.2015
LNU suggests a new model of distance education, a feature of which is the world-famous Swiss quality.
Two-week internship of the specialists of evacuated Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University at Swiss higher educational establishments has been completed. Team of our university included Head of Department of Analysis and Prospective Development of University Mykola Semenov and Head of Centre for International and Educative Work Iryna Myhovych. Visit to Switzerland has been aimed at studying the best European experience in distance education and creating own national product – distance education which will be of higher quality than traditional one due to using the newest educational technologies. This product is education which bears the marks of famous Swiss quality.
Experience in organizing education at Swiss universities is very useful for Ukrainian higher educational establishments when implementing new Law on Higher Education. Academic freedom of universities in the organization of research and educational process is protected by the Constitution of Switzerland. Students in Switzerland take great pleasure from the learning process, from the fact that every step of education brings some personal discovery and personal research. Moving in this direction is the main task for our university despite the difficult conditions.
Luhansk colleagues has been invited by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. The university is among the five best universities in the world. The institute has graduated 21 Nobel laureates including Albert Einstein.
Program in Switzerland has been very busy. Organizers have done their best to explain the features of organizing education via e-learning technologies. There were interesting approaches to organization of educational process at ETH – process of planning, using new educational technologies, simplifying the learning process, the use of educational video, the opportunity for each student to record on video a lecture and view it on the Internet and so on.
Not only professors from ETH have shared their own experience in distance learning but also the experts from universities of Regensdorf, Bern, Lugano and Winterthur. So, among useful presentations of experience in organizing distance education there was the one from Swiss University of Applied Sciences (FFHS), in particular, the use of didactic methods in the process of blended learning, the adaptation of education to the individual features of students. Colleagues from Bern told how to use the latest technology to conduct tests – oral, written and combined ones. At Winterthur there was interesting information about how to train teachers to use distance learning technologies. Swiss Italian University (USI) from Lugano has demonstrated uncommon game-based learning methods.
On the ground of learned experience the experts from Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University have set an ambitious new task – since the next academic year not only to provide quality training for persons temporarily displaced, but also to offer new excellent product for the whole of Ukraine – a modern European education with use of e-learning technologies developed in accordance with the best international standards!
