New Institute of Education Master’s Programmes Win Potanin Foundation Grant Competition

© Daniil Prokofyev/ HSE University

The HSE University Institute of Education (IOE) will launch new courses as part of its master’s programmes in the 2022/23 academic year. They are designed to provide competencies to those either currently working or planning to work in education. The plans have already gained financial support: the Vladimir Potanin Foundation ran a grant competition in which two HSE University Institute of Education entries won grants and another made the reserve list.

The new courses in the IOE’s master’s programmes will help teachers to become instructional designers, train managers to best utilise research, and train those interested to implement innovations both in schools and outside them. These courses will also be available to students studying in other disciplines of the Institute of Education and HSE University.

The Vladimir Potanin Foundation runs a competition for teachers of master’s programmes every year. This year’s competition received 582 entries, 150 of which were named winners and will receive 500,000 rubles each. Another five entries made the reserve list, which means that they will receive support if one of the winners is unable to implement their project.

‘It is interesting that we achieved this result on our first time participating in the competition,’ said Tatiana Khavenson, Director of the IOE Department of Educational Programmes and co-creator of the course ‘An Evidence-based Approach for Managers and Researchers in Education’. ‘Winning the competition provides support for creating new master’s courses. This is very important, especially when creating an open course—students only see the tip of the iceberg, while the huge amount of work that goes into developing the course, materials and technology goes unseen. And this complex, routine side of the process is what the Potanin Foundation competition supports.’

Tatiana Khavenson and the creators of other courses spoke about what prospective students can expect to learn.

Tatiana Khavenson

‘We developed a course on the methodology of an evidence-based approach for manages and researchers. This was because we encountered a problem: the current trend is for data-based management, but traditionally methodological courses are taught in roughly the same way—usually by sociologists,’ explains Tatiana Khavenson. ‘Our master’s programmes have shown us that this approach does not work. Managers working in education do not need to learn the technical specifics of conducting evidence-based research. I would even say that they need to unlearn how to do research, because it turns out badly. They need a different focus in their approach to working with data. What’s needed is a trained eye and perspective. We need to train qualified clients, consumers in how to use studies appropriately, who and what to order, which research methods to use in different situations, and what conclusions can be made from research. This is relevant to the programme in Educational Administration. Regarding the programme in Evidence-based Education Development, we’re training researchers who know how to work with data, create their own tools etc—here, the focus is on methodology and interaction with clients. The goal of the course we’ve created is to look at the same research steps from two angles: for practitioners (managers) and for researchers. We want to ensure that their interactions are broadly in line with a model of “the person ordering the research the person carrying it out”. We applied for a grant for methodological support and the development of assignments. We are currently on the waiting list for now, but I think that no matter what, elements of the course will start being implemented in some form in our master’s programmes this academic year.’

Elena Chernobay

‘The idea for the new course is linked to the addition of the new “Educational Product Design” track as part of our Master’s in Pedagogy,’ explains Elena Chernobay, Professor of the IOE Department of Educational Programmes and co-author of the course ‘Educational Products: From Idea to Realisation’. ‘The track will start on September 1 this year. It is a standalone programme for those who want to gain a qualification not just in pedagogy, but as instructional designers. The new course forms the basis of this, and it will be available to those studying outside the IOE and even HSE University. The structure of the course corresponds to the stages of designing an educational product from scratch. It covers education theories, analysis of offers on the market and target audience needs, models of pedagogical design, effective strategies for product promotion, and more. Our course differs from similar offerings in the education market due to its evidence-based approach to education and its focus on research in instructional design, the inclusion of elements such as learning analytics and visualisations to assess individual educational results and optimise educational products, as well as feedback tools.

We hope that this track will open up new opportunities for those who do not have a pedagogical education or who want to work, for example, in online schools or in companies that create educational products. As a member of the programme’s admission committee, I can see that there is already a lot of interest in the new track. We are currently (until April 30) accepting documents for early-invitation admission to all programmes except Management in Higher Education.

We developed the course as a team, with Maria Lytaeva, Yulia Koreshnikova, Evgenia Efimova, Madina Davlatova, and Alexandra Chentsova. We plan to use the grant to create a library fund for the Master’s in Pedagogy, conduct online promotion of the course, and buy software for use in the learning process.’

Diana Koroleva

‘Our course incorporates all the progress made by the laboratory over the years. It is the quintessential expression of what we do as researchers,’ explains Diana Koroleva, Head of the HSE University Laboratory for Educational Innovation Research and co-author of the course ‘Education Design for the Future: Innovations, Digitalisation, and Personal Potential in a Changing World’. ‘We started with the questions of what are innovations, how do we assess their effects and create them, what is digitalisation, what competencies create innovation potential in an individual, what lets us quickly adapt to a rapidly changing world, what makes up soft skills, and how do we teach this? This course will be part of the programme in Evidence-based Education Development, but it will be an intercampus course available to all HSE University students. We also want to open it up to people outside the university, to people like the educational innovators who took part in the competition. They will benefit both from immersion in the research side of things and from the opportunity to form collaborations in the applied track. We want the course to be a platform for innovators and students to create something together, evaluate real projects, work to evaluate individual innovation potential in practice, and find like-minded people, partners, and maybe even employers.

The grant provides an opportunity to put a team together and develop a course. We have made many developments, but they are research based. They need to be transplanted into educational and methodological materials.

The whole laboratory team worked on the course, so I’d like to thank Anastasia Andreeva, Nikita Kotik, and Elizaveta Korotkikh. It was gratifying to see how students of various levels got involved. That’s the value of the course: early-career researchers will teach students.’

For more information on the Institute of Education’s master’s programmes, please see here.