Current state of distance education at ANAS

In order to prevent the spread of a new type of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan, from March 3, 2020, the educational process in all educational institutions, including the master’s degree of ANAS, has been suspended.

In accordance with the order of the President of ANAS academician Ramiz Mehdiyev “On the organization of distance (remote) education for master students of ANAS”, a new approach has been applied in the educational process. At present, the distance learning process in the master’s degree of ANAS is fully provided.

This was announced by the head of the Office of Science and Education of the Presidium of ANAS, PhD in Economics Fail Kazimov.

He said that currently 188 master students are studying at the master’s degree of ANAS. It covers a total of 84 specializations in 25 specialties. 217 professors and teachers are involved in the teaching process at ANAS, each of them successfully participates in the distance education process.

In the world practice, distance education is carried out using various methods and tools. At ANAS, mainly “synchronous” distance education is preferred. Because this is the most widely used learning method for continuing education. In this way, communication between teachers and master students is carried out in the form of online (live) teleconferences or webinars in virtual classrooms.

It was noted that the most used programs are Zoom, GoTomeeting, Vebex and Skype. These are modern communication applications that are an easy, reliable cloud platform for mobile devices, desktops, video and audio conferencing between smartphones, collaboration, discussions and webinars. Despite the high level of organization of education, it is not convenient to conduct a number of lessons at a distance. Thus, it is important to have appropriate laboratory conditions for the implementation of laboratory classes provided in the curriculum. If we take into account that the master’s degree of ANAS is of scientific master studies, from this point of view, high-level teaching of laboratory classes is of special importance for master students. Taking this into account, laboratory classes are planned to be held at the end of the academic year.

Considering the importance of scientific and pedagogical practice, second-year master students were involved in distance practice accompanied by internship supervisors, in addition to participating in online classes, they also passed at least 2 test lessons.

F. Kazimov said that one of the vital issues in the process of distance education is the implementation of quality control of lessons. The technical features of the programs used allow to control the lessons conducted remotely. Employees of the Office of Science and Education of the Presidium of ANAS and education departments of relevant institutes join the classes according to the established schedule and control the process, at the same time, actively participate in the organization of education.

“One of the main priorities of ANAS is to train highly qualified scientific personnel through doctoral and dissertation studies. It is known that the process of admission to doctoral and dissertation programs for 2019 under the Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science program has been completed. The dissertation topics of the doctoral students and dissertators who have successfully passed the competitions in the direction of topical problems in the relevant specialties have been submitted to the scientific councils of the departments, – said F. Kazimov.

20 April 2020

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