In the spring-summer of 2016, I thought that the existing 2 higher educations do not give me the opportunity to get either moral or material satisfaction from work, because not particularly appreciated (I am a philologist-translator and a specialist in foreign literature). Therefore, I need to learn something else. Since I am a 100% humanist, such specialties as a C ++ programmer, СSS and other C-ki, a chemist are closed to me, but a good HR specialist has not hindered anyone yet.
After the choice was made regarding the specialty, the torment of the search began. good university offering a distance education program. According to reviews, I stopped at the Russian State University for the Humanities (Russian State University for the Humanities). Fortunately, he has a long history - it has existed since 1908! - venerable teachers, good reputation. And, importantly, the price is reasonable.
But difficulties began almost immediately. Firstly, distance education at RGGU does not imply a division into 1st higher and 2nd higher, it is considered a priori 1st. And you have to take entrance exams, if not USE results... And I don't have them, tk. I finished school in 2001, when the abbreviation was not so terrible. And one more thing: since this is the 1st VO, then the study of a heap of general education subjects is guaranteed to you. It's also good that several subjects were transferred to me from previous diplomas.
Well, okay, passing the exams was a simple matter, however, the core subject was MATH! But I passed it, having studied the entire school course in algebra and geometry (at the age of 32).
Further - more interesting. After the publication of the enrollment order, the student must pay for the 1st semester of study by providing a scanned copy of the payment document by e-mail. Only after that, access to the personal account on the DO portal and to the library will be provided. I sent the payment on September 9th. After numerous calls, access to the personal account was provided on October 10, a month later. I had to struggle for the library for 2 more weeks, since the sent password did not pass.
On November 2, I suddenly received a message that I was in arrears in payment. To say that my eyes are 5 rubles each is to say nothing. I sent a confirmation of the transfer on September 9! Okay, a few more letters and calls, and the information appeared in the system that I paid for 1 semester.
We go to your personal account.
This is how the section of disciplines that you need to master in the current semester looks like. We click on the discipline, a list of topics for study opens. There are links to a list of tutorials, some can be downloaded directly from here. Everything seems to be fine. BUT! I went to my personal account on October 12 to start preparing. Half of the items were inactive: i.e. you go inside the course, and there it is BLANK. Some of the topics were changed within a month. Not drastically, but still it’s strange that the certification has begun, and the topics are changing.
Yes, I must say that certification takes place in 2 stages: intermediate and final. This testing, for a certain number of questions (from 30 to 50) is given an hour of time. Thus, without passing the intermediate testing, you will not reach the final one. The deadlines for each type of certification are set. For some subjects, you need to perform tests, which are uploaded here, in your personal account.
The next strangeness after the problems with the courses is communication with teachers.
It is only possible through the forum.
That is, you create a new topic in each course, or you join an existing one, ask questions, and in theory, fellow students and the teacher answer right there. Fellow students answer, yes, but the teacher does not. There is another option to write him a message, but if there is no teacher in the general list of those connected to this course, then there is no one to send the message to. And, even if you find it, write a question, then getting an answer is still not guaranteed. Alternatively, call the teacher. But this is if you find his phone number on the Internet.
And now, hurray, comrades! You passed the session, rested, paid for the next semester on time (before February 28), sent a confirmation to the accounting department, go to your personal account on the "Curriculum" tab and see that the next certification is from March 15th.
Great, today, February 21, February 20, the payment was made, which means that the 2nd semester courses are already available, it's time to study.
But no. First, you come across a message that you are in arrears. How, again ??????? Again letters to the accounting department, to the course curator with the questions "How?", "Why?" And the answer is:
"The portal is being reloaded. Therefore, something disappears, and something suddenly appears. All this is a consequence of the reorganization of the University, which began last year. We are all very concerned about this and can only hope that the portal will work in full . "
Excuse me, but I have something to do with it? And the rest of the distance learning students?
Ok, we are waiting.
A week passes, the situation is the same. Another week goes by - no change.
On March 7, I started calling the curator. No answer. Calling continues on March 10. The curator of other disciplines answers that yes, the problem exists, they are trying to solve it, but so far they have not succeeded. I ask when to call back. Ask to contact the manager. After 3.5 hours of continuous calls, the phone is finally answered. I get an answer that this problem concerns only translation freshmen , they are trying to solve it, and perhaps this week they will.
And so, today, March 15, I look and see that things are still there. And the midterm certification has already begun. And it will end on April 17th. Will I, a working person, have time to meet the deadlines? In the session of the 1st semester, access to the topics of one of the subjects was opened a week before the end of the final certification ...
And you definitely need to tell about the library.
She may not be bad. But you will not find most of the textbooks and teaching aids recommended by teachers in the list of educational and methodological literature in the library to which access is provided. You will not find these manuals and textbooks in the public domain anywhere. Only in the off-line library. Since these are the works of the teachers of the RSUH, they were published at the RSUH, and they are in the physical library of the RSUH. Alas.....
In general, with horror I think about what I will do when narrow-profile subjects go, the time comes to write term papers and theses.
So, friends, the university may be prestigious, but distance education, its technical support, to hell. Look for other options if you need to get the 2nd higher education: Evening courses, 3/6-month courses, if there are any in your city. Well, either another university.
I just have to crawl through the thorns to the stars
Today, distance learning is very popular among students in Russia and the CIS. Many modern students choose this particular form of study due to a variety of circumstances. First of all, distance learning allows you to study and work at the same time, gain experience in your future profession, as well as build your personal life without any problems. Secondly, you can choose a university anywhere in the world, not limited to your geographic location. This aspect is especially important for Russian-speaking students from different countries. the former USSR... However, soon after the start of training, all students, regardless of the level of education, are unable to successfully pass the exams, since this form of training imposes too many requirements on students. Remote assistance to students is the main direction of our work today.
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Help for students of the Russian State University for the Humanities
Many students, regardless of age, social and financial status, choose distance learning, as it allows you to combine study with work, and not waste such precious time. Our clients include more than thirty students of the Russian State University for the Humanities. Due to the many faculties of the university, we have to constantly improve and develop various programs, especially for the students of this university. In our database, there are many works that we have performed during the under-ice years. Looking into the personal account of a remote university, using the -Bakalavr rggu key, you can independently study examples of the work we have done.
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Frankly, I expected more. Okay, I didn't expect any attention, but I expected to receive at least some training. In fact, the process can be described as paid self-education. In which the participation of the university is reduced to an exclusively controlling function.
I already have experience of full-time study and distance learning. Full-time education, in theory, should be the most productive in terms of the volume of knowledge and the quality of education. “It should be,” because full-time education falls on the age at which people, as a rule, still do not fully understand the values of education and learn for the sake of grades, not knowledge. And besides, they do not have the opportunity to apply this knowledge in practice. As a result, very little is deposited in the head. The final quality of the cognitive baggage depends mainly on teachers and their ability to captivate the subject. Which, frankly, doesn't happen often.
Distance education is considered worse. Because what can you learn in two months of sessions a year? And no one learns between sessions. It's like that. At least I and my classmates had it. We did not study between sessions. We worked. This means that at least part of the knowledge has already been used. And part of it was understood better, since the adjacent areas. And the motivation is higher - it is more clear why to study, what is important, than can be neglected. This understanding did not always correspond to the truth, really. Especially in the "negligible" part. But this experience has already shown in the future. In general, I would not say that the "full-time mode" of education left more knowledge in my head. The month before the session and the month of the correspondence session were very intensive in terms of learning, despite the abuse of alcohol and adventure. This was partly facilitated by the "group mind" - for almost the entire duration of the training we gathered the same group of 5 people (plus a similar stable group of girls) and not a single subject could resist the joint efforts - each of us was stronger in some area and helped others.
I was thinking about extramural as a second higher education, but, firstly, modern technologies, the Internet, rich experience of webinars, video courses and online training have led me to believe that distance is enough. Secondly, the employer may be skeptical about two months of absence from work. Thirdly, the price of the issue is that the remote one is much cheaper. I chose the Russian State Humanitarian University, because the university itself is prestigious, serious, and besides, the faculty of psychology is represented by the Vygotsky Institute, for which I have an irresistible respect after reading a couple of his works.
Here it is also worth answering the question that we often hear - why do I need a second higher education at all? The fact is that in the course of his enthusiasm for personal growth in matters of increasing personal productivity, developing the necessary skills and habits, in a manner characteristic of techies, he became interested not only in the question of "how should I do it?" but also "how does it work?" What is laziness, how memory works, where does motivation grow from, etc. Books and articles in the genre of popular science and applied psychology, as well as business literature, reveal these issues very superficially and not always correctly. I became interested in academic psychology and faced the problem that, as a science, psychology is poorly structured, standardized, and its status as a science is still in question. This is understandable, because here the subject of science (the researcher) is its own object, which imposes certain difficulties, but it is difficult to even understand where to start. And it is completely unclear where to continue. A bunch of schools, directions and branches, views and approaches, theories and methodologies that contradict and complement each other at the same time. The wave-corpuscle theory of light is resting. In general, I expected from the university, first of all, the structure and sequence of studying the subject.
The second moment is the transition to the status of a father (the birth of one son, then the second). Reading books on education plus an engineering approach - an interest in "how it works", plus an awareness of the need to understand new trends in education, in general, a bonus to the previous argument. With a slight bias towards pedagogy.
And the third is the sudden need to teach and share knowledge and experience. Information Technology, worldly wisdom and, in perspective, aikido. Which again requires an understanding of the motives of people's behavior.
In short, when I came across a version of the psychological and pedagogical direction of the second higher, I did not even begin to doubt.
And so, distance learning. I suppose that this format is considered quite ineffective. And here I am inclined to agree now. For a diploma can be reached without studying anything at all. Because all tests are passed in the form of tests (exams) and tests (credits). Tests can be googled right on the way, and tests can be ordered, since graduate students of the university itself, having access to the contact details of the "distant students", send relevant proposals to the mail.
But the motivation for knowledge is now the highest. And the opportunities to get them, as it turned out, are the lowest.
From the introductory course:
« Distance learning Is training using Internet technologies, video conferencing technologies, webinars and other modern means of interactive communication. "
Sounds interesting. Especially after using resources like coursera or universarium. Adapted video lectures, video conferences with teachers, group discussions and any other interactive are directly expected. Well, okay, I admit, these are too idealistic fantasies, but at least I was waiting for links to training manuals and videos of lectures. It just turned out that the main tool that can be attributed to Internet technologies, in this type of training, at the moment, is the ability to upload a docx file with a test in the website's web form. And take a test instead of an exam.
I remember a certain anticipation when I finally got access to the courses and started exploring the resources, materials and tools available. It turned out that all that is available to me for each course is a list of topics and a list of references. Moreover, for some subjects, even these lists are formed "to waste". For example, a couple of positions in the main literature section and half a dozen in the additional. Moreover, none of the listed sources contains information on the topic of the selected test.
"For students enrolled in correspondence form with the use of distance learning technologies, it must be remembered that this type of training requires self-organization and discipline... You yourself choose the pace of training, choose the forms of communication with teachers and, of course, success in training here primarily depends only on you.»
The last statement is 100% true. Indeed, the success of the training depends only on you. Because there is no way to define even the students of your group - all student profiles are closed by default, there is an opportunity to open it for your group, but I did not find a single open one. All there is for interaction is a general forum, not broken down into categories and sections. 90% of it consists of topics with capacious headings "Methodists", "Help" and "Give access to courses for retake" (this begs the question why there is no mechanism for sending such requests directly to the methodologists). You can try to create a topic for gathering classmates, but, as I understand it, not all students go to the forum, because 90% of it consists of ... well, in general, there is nothing to read there. And the topic very quickly flies into the pipe due to the flow of the same type of requests for access to courses.
With regard to communication with teachers. It is theoretically possible. About " choose the forms of communication with teachers»- you can choose to write a letter (if the email address is specified in the profile) or write an internal message. And to hope that "244 days" in the "last entry" column means that there was simply no need, and you will receive an answer in a timely manner.
In the end, how was the first session .
« You choose the pace of learning"- certainly too optimistic. If you are working and cannot devote the whole day to study, then the certification period begins rapidly and inevitably, and flies by even faster.
- In mid-October, I got access to the courses.
- From November 10 to December 20 (40 days) - intermediate certification. 3 tests, 4 controls. That is, less than a month to prepare.
- From January 10 to February 10 (30 days) - final certification. 3 tests, 7 controls.
The control is such a mini-abstract of 12-18 pages (including the title, content and bibliography).
Even if the list of literature on a subject does not exceed 5 positions, it is completely unrealistic to read and comprehend 5 books in a few days (one subject. 10. Subjects. Total - 50 books). Much more is indicated for a number of literature items. The situation is complicated by the fact that, sometimes, nothing from the list indicated can be found even for money (in stores and services such as google play books). There is an electronic library of the university, but there is also far from everything (yes, almost nothing in reality), and from the fact that there is nothing you can not download. And reading online is far from always acceptable (and it is extremely inconvenient to use the service from mobile devices).
I fully felt the value of the lectures. But out of 10 subjects of the first session, there were two lecture notes. On the history of world civilizations and general psychology. There are only three lectures in history - more like writing tests.
In the best case, I managed to read one (selected by eye from the list or simply which I managed to find) book on a separate subject. History of ancient civilizations (three volumes that very superficially covered the period BC), didactics, foundations of general psychology and anatomy. In the rest, he analyzed only the topic that he chose for the test.
At the same time, in the course of preparing for the final certification, I almost gave up on work, since it was calm there in January. That is, he did not cool off.
Control is carried out with the inevitability and irreversibility of the mechanism. There is little opportunity to negotiate and influence the teacher - most of the tests are checked after the deadline has expired, when nothing can be changed or corrected. Out of all 11 works, I received only 3 marks almost immediately after the submission. From two helpful teachers. In most cases, there are not even any comments, which is why the rating is lowered. In the case of testing, the results are generally analyzed by a soulless machine. Although it is possible to retake them. 2 or 3 tries. But with a mandatory gap between them, so you can not delay with the first.
There seems to be no tails left. At least I passed everything, although the results have not yet been obtained in all disciplines and the record is empty. They promise to finish by the end of February. And on March 10 - a new session.
The final feeling is that it is even harder to study remotely than in absentia. If you study. If you do not study (order work), then it is easier. But why then?
I believe that the format of distance education is simply not sufficiently developed yet, and its evolution and debugging is underway. They say it was even worse in the past. Scary to imagine.