Online learning is a global trend in education, consistently implemented by the world’s largest and most famous universities such as Stanford, Berkley, MIT and others. For Kazakh universities the situation with the coronovirus pandemic and declared quarantine in the country could be both a serious test of strength and a good opportunity to show their achievements in this direction.
In this aspect, Bolashaq Academy is keeping up with global trends and even before the quarantine was declared, it began introducing distance learning through such services as Moodle and Bigbluebutton. In the first phase, the services were intended only for those who wanted to get a second degree, and already in the autumn of 2019 was opened and introduced full-time distance learning in the format of blended-learning – a combination of distance format with the classic full-time education. In this regard, educational materials for online classes in many disciplines and courses of the Academy were adapted and introduced, and many students have acquired skills in mixed mode.
Despite the fact that quarantine measures are gradually weakening, the state decided to end the academic year in the educational institutions of the country in a distance form. For the higher education system, this meant that higher education institutions had to think through and determine the distance forms of all procedures of final state certification, including the protection of students’ diploma (final) works, and requirements for them. This work was conducted by the Academy and instructions for action were received.
In this connection, to conduct all kinds of final state certification, including the protection of diploma (final) works of students, the Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication has chosen a free, fully functional and possessive (open software) program Jitsi Meet. To use it, you do not need to register an account, and the program works in a browser.
The main functions of the program are:
– Ability to participate up to 75 people (up to 35 participants while maintaining high quality communication)
– Public and private chats
– Blurred background after person (function in beta yet)
– Integration with Slack, Google Calendar and Office 365
Users can share their desktop or make presentations. If you want to give a public lecture, you can broadcast a video conference on YouTube. Conversely, you can watch YouTube videos together in a Jitsi chat room. Documents can be edited together, and there is a connection for those who want to get in touch by phone.
Conference participants have the opportunity to virtually raise their hand with their own button – to signal that you want to get the word next. There is a built-in chat for exchanging text messages, as well as a function to record the current discussion.
Preliminarily having studied all possibilities of this program and having tried it in webinars, on April, 28th of this year the first procedure of protection of diploma works through jitsi.org was conducted by the department.
The defensive performances of the graduation works of three students were heard: Daut Araylym Maratovna, Kundizbay Zhanerke Meyramkyzy, Ismagulov Sagynysh Orazkhanovich. Students were presented slide presentations, reviews, reviews, antiplagiarism report, norm control, etc.
All the protections were successful. The students followed all the requirements of IGA procedure. At the end the commission members discussed all the speeches and announced the following results:
Daut Araylym Maratovna – 70 points
Kundizbay Zhanerke Meiramkyzy – 80 points
Sagynysh Orazhanovich Ismagulov – 90 points.
