Institute of distance education of TSU enters Indian educational platforms

Institute of distance education of TSU enters Indian educational platforms

The delegation of Tomsk State University, which included Artyom Rykun, Vice-Rector for International Affairs, Daria Maslova, Director of the Center for Instructional design and online learning at the Institute of distance education of TSU and Yulia Mishenina, Deputy Director of the Center, presented online courses of TSU in the Indian state West Bengal.


The main purpose of the visit to India was to find partners to access Indian online educational platforms with a pool of training courses in English prepared by the Institute of Distance Education. As a result of the visit, preliminary agreements were reached on cooperation with the national online platform Swayam and two major universities in West Bengal - the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) and the State University of Cooch Behar (Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University).

— Eight major national universities of India are working simultaneously on the Swayam educational platform, which are holders of online courses presented there, - says Daria Maslova. — One of these universities is responsible for courses related to IT, high technologies, and it also regulates the interaction of the Swayam platform with foreign educational organizations. This is IIT Kharagpur University, with the administration of which we held talks and presented our English-language programs. As a result, it was decided to start the process of preparing the documents necessary to place our courses on the Swayam platform.


Institute of distance education of TSU has many courses in English, tested by a foreign audience. These are programs on psychological assessment, technologies for creating presentations, translation quality management and others, which were posted on the international educational platform Coursera and became popular among foreign users. In addition, within the framework of Institute's cooperation with the branch of Gazprom International Limited in Algeria, the team created a line of English-language programs in the field of training and retraining of personnel for the oil and gas sector. These programs will also be in demand in the Indian education market.

— The task of entering the Indian online education market cannot be solved linearly, - says Artyom Rykun, Vice—rector of TSU for International Affairs. — Indian colleagues expect Tomsk State University not only to participate in the implementation of educational projects based on online platforms, but also to cooperate in the implementation of what they see as their mission. It is about the revival of the West Bengal region as a center of culture, especially literature and linguistics, as well as the center of science and education in India. Therefore, our Indian colleagues set our delegation the task of involving the TSU university community in joint activities in such areas as cultural exchange, scientific and educational exchange, and joint research.


It is fundamentally important for Indian students to gain international experience during their studies. But a trip to another country is expensive, and some students can’t afford it.There are few grants for studying at foreign universities. According to Rossotrudnichestvo, currently Indian students are provided with only 200 quotas to study in Russia with the support of the Government of India. Therefore, for most of them, studying online in TSU programs and obtaining a state certificate will be a good opportunity to strengthen their positions when looking for a job.

In order to introduce Indian students to Siberia, Tomsk and TSU in advance, a series of information and entertainment podcasts in English will be created. The University of Cooch Behar is interested in broadcasting them on a local radio station.

— There is a radio station in Cooch Behar that broadcasts to the whole of India and the countries of Africa, - says Daria Maslova. — The university staff suggested that we prepare a series of podcasts with stories about Tomsk and our university, about its history and the current level of higher education in Tomsk. For Indian partners, it is important that TSU has a 146-year history, while being a modern high-tech university with fundamental scientific research and a large number of professors and students.

Смотрите также