13.04.2020
For the first time in the history of RSUH, the Open Door Day was held online. On April 11 and 12, potential applicants and their parents had the opportunity to remotely receive advice from the faculty, as well as ask questions regarding admission, educational and student life.
For the first time in the history of RSUH, the Open Door Day was held online. On April 11 and 12, potential applicants and their parents had the opportunity to remotely receive advice from the faculty, as well as ask questions regarding admission, educational and student life.
“This new experience turned out to be very useful,” said Dr. Natalia Berezina, Director of the Center for Distance Learning Technologies. - We understood how to approach the organization of the process. The main difficulty was that the teachers had to acсess from different locations, had different equipment, and some had trouble with the Internet. But in general they were well prepared, and gave informative presentations.”
Web-rooms were created for faculties, institutes, centers, colleges, pre-Universitarium and other structures. Questions could be asked in chat rooms. In addition, an opportunity was provided to connect to the specified resource via a test link so that there would be no communication problems with the real session.
Dr. Konstantin Mazin, Head of the Office of Career Guidance and Admissions, also praised the technological side of the Day. “Guests could attend all presentations,” he emphasized. - We divided the event into five stages, so that people could visit as many different institutes and faculties as possible. On Saturday, at different times, we held three stages, and two on Sunday. At each stage, six participants were involved, chosen from different fields, such as philology and economics, so that the visitors’ interests did not overlap. And as far as majors of one program, for example, economics, management and advertising, these were distributed in sequence, and if a person wanted to visit all of them, it was entirely possible.”
Online attendance was lower than expected: the number of visitors decreased markedly compared to the Open Doors Day-2019, which had been held in the traditional format. However, a similar situation is typical today for most Moscow universities and is associated with a change in the usual order of social life.
According to Dr. Mazin, applicants are primarily concerned about how to take the USE in order to get the opportunity to enter a university. “Most of the questions they ask are not related to the content of our training programs, but to the application procedure. But we still do not have an understanding of how this will happen, because all the deadlines have been shifted, including those for application. The Ministry of Education and Science used to say that classes would definitely begin on September 1, but now it may be necessary to postpone the enrollment. Therefore, everything is up in the air.
In addition, low attendance is due to the fact that people still hope for a personal visit. In May there will be the last Open Doors Day for B.A. programs, and if by this time the pandemic is over, you can come and see the University in person. However, we are definitely losing some applicants who otherwise would come to Moscow from remote areas: they decided not to enter Moscow universities this year due to the pandemic. Everyone who planned to receive paid education will also have these opportunities reduced for economic reasons. So there were several factors all tied together.”
On any day, guests of the Open Day could listen to speeches by the executive representatives of RSUH. Rector Bezborodov, in a welcoming speech, expressed confidence that the remote format of the meeting would not hinder anyone from getting acquainted with the advantages of studying at RSUH.
“RSUH is the largest humanitarian university in Russia,” Rector emphasized. - Its history is based on the legendary Moscow State Institute of History and Archives, which continues to exist as a structural unit of RSUH and is located on Nikolskaya Street.
Many academic schools of RSUH are world famous, so hundreds of foreign students are striving to enter our university. After overcoming the adversities that the world is facing today, we will have strengthened our international educational community many times over. Remote forms of training, which are widely practiced today, aren’t new to us; we have been successfully using these technologies for a long time. But nevertheless, today, when the students of RSUH, and that’s more than 15 thousand people, switched to a remote form of training, it is important that this system function without a hitch.”
Dr. Efim Pivovar, President of RSUH, pointed out in his welcoming speech that RSUH offered a full range programs in humanities. “The University is strong in the area of academic synthesis, because many areas of training are located at the intersection of humanities and natural sciences, primarily cognitive technologies. RSUH is celebrating its 30th anniversary next year, but its history is much older. For example, the Central Hall of the main building was opened in 1912, and the educational activity on Nikolskaya Street began as far back as at the times of Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.”
Dr. Pivovar also wished future students to make the right educational choice, success in implementing it and good luck.
Dr. Olga Makarevich, Executive Secretary of Admissions, explained the current application procedure. Dr. Nadezhda Borozdina, from the Office of International Relations, spoke on how international students may apply to RSUH, and Dr. Irakly Bolkvadze, Vice-Rector for Social and Educational Work with Students, spoke about dorms and the student life in general.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
