On March 4, the international educational platform Coursera decided to suspend cooperation with Russian universities and restrict access to their content. The platform hosted 198 online courses and 20 specializations from Saint Petersburg University with 980,605 students.
‘We value every student and do everything to ensure your access to our online educational products. Therefore, more than 90 online courses that were exclusively presented on Coursera will now be presented on the national Open Education platform and Saint Petersburg University’s own educational platform, since the right to education is one of the fundamental human rights. Our mission is to give people the opportunity to learn and share knowledge,’
Vladimir Starostenko
Director of the Centre of E-Learning Development, SPbU (Saint Petersburg University)
Executive Committee member, Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance.
Moreover, at the strategic meeting, which took place before the statement from Coursera and was devoted to the development strategy of the Russian online educational platform “Open Education“, representatives of the founding universities of the platform came to the conclusion that it is necessary to preserve the possibility of access to content for an international audience, so it was agreed to increase the number of online products also in English.
Due to the current situation, users of the Coursera platform can continue their studies on the Open Education platform, which already hosts more than 160 online courses from Saint Petersburg University.
Information about the launching of new courses publishes on the website (https://online.spbu.ru/) of the Centre of E-Learning Development of SPbU, as well as on the official resources of the University.
Reference:
- https://english.spbu.ru/news-events/news/coursera-students-will-be-able-study-online-courses-st-petersburg-university-open
- https://online.spbu.ru/news_eng/continue-online-education-with-st-petersburg-university/
