The Open Ed 2021 session entitled “Implementation of Open Educational Resources in the Universities of Russian Federation” reminded me of the EduCoop project in Poland. Tonight I watched Kseniia Nikitina and Sergey Kovalenko present. Nikitina is a doctoral student and described their research on OER and open in Russia. The Russian educational system has 252 universities and one federal law on education, according to Nikitina. The law has been revisited and updated, but there is limited information about OER and open. The aim of Nikitina’s research is to: “discovery of features in the experience of OER implementation in developing countries and their analysis on the example of Russian universities.” Twenty-seven universities in Russia participated in this research. Nikitina mentioned that some universities receive accreditation to be classified in certain groups of Russian universities. After selecting the universities, Nikitina selected indicators for comparisons. Indicators selected included: status (federal or from project 5-100), the ratio of the number of students to the number of research and teaching staff, number of MOOC created by the university, the availability of its own MOOC and OER platforms, category of access to OER for non-students, and the use of OER in educational programs. Nikitina created a huge table and the main findings were that: 47% have platforms of their own with open access for non-students, 74% have a regulation on transferring credit units or subject hours by MOOCs, and 41% publish their own MOOCs on the National platform of open education. Nikitina also identified emerging needs: governmental support, studying trends, new investments/business models, creation and funding of infrastructure, digital literacy (knowing about open licensing and open pedagogy), awareness at the national and organizational levels, criteria and rules for implementation of OER, and commissions/working groups/and experts. The recommendations that Nikitina shared were based on the UNESCO recommendations modified for the Russian context. For state and governmental bodies, Nikitina suggested norms and legal regulation, raising awareness, financial support, training more specialists, and initiating international cooperation. For educational organizations, Nikitina suggested adopting internal regulations on OER, creating a division or a working group on OER, searching for analogs of educational materials among OER, provide opportunities to transfer credits with online courses, and reducing the load of classical lecture classes from teachers. For the teaching staff, Nikitina suggested continuing improvement of digital literacy skills and knowledge of open licensing, recommending OER for extracurricular activities, create OER or providing open access for existing resources, and encouraging students to use OER. Finally, Nikitina suggested that students should request materials in the public domain and use OER platforms provided by the university and other organizations, using and quoting resources from open access in projects and educational activities. I thought this session helped me learn about OER-focused graduate work in Russia and the organization of the university systems. The recommendations make sense and highlight the need for training models that can be disseminated and sustained.
