Online lessons for Russia's rural schoolchildren

A real-time programme on the internet means that children in the Russian countryside can receive lessons and prepare for exams online in remote schools or from home.

Two thousand miles from Moscow, in a sleepy Siberian village remote even from the regional capital, Novosibirsk, a child is preparing to sit an important exam that will decide her future career and, possibly, her chances of going to a prestigious university.
In the past, many such children suffered from restricted access to schooling in Russia, because of the huge distances involved in travelling to school, and the transport difficulties.

But now, thanks to a real-time distance learning programme on the internet, children don’t have to leave their village, but can receive lessons and prepare for exams online in remote schools, or even from home.
The Novosibirsk region, which stretches 400 miles from west to east and 280 miles from north to south, suffers from depopulation in many districts, as young people migrate to big cities.
Like many such rural areas around the world, it’s a struggle to keep rural schools open – not just because of a lack of pupils, but due to a shortage of teachers.
In an attempt to improve the situation, the Novosibirsk region has launched the Distance Network School project, which today involves 5,237 children.
According to project director Nelya Kim, the idea came out of a training programme conducted remotely for teachers.
“Back in 2006, when a national IT education project kicked off, we first worked remotely with 500 teachers in their native villages to upgrade their qualifications,” says Ms Kim.
“We were impressed with the results and thought, ‘Why not try to teach schoolchildren in the same way? For example, train them for the Unified State Exam?’” (Russia’s standardised university entrance examination).
In Novosibirsk’s pilot project, the regional IT centre prepared a course based on the moodle.ru free virtual teaching framework. Children from three districts in the region studied remotely, receiving lessons from a teacher at his desktop in Novosibirsk, the regional capital.
The exam scores of those who participated in the distance-learning project were very high. Despite this success, many parents still question the initiative.
“Of course, there are many problems,” Ms Kim says. “You’ve got to deal with parents who demand ‘a real live teacher’ all the time. We go out to the rural areas and explain that the network teacher is real and qualified. And anyway, there is no other teacher.”
Assistant principal Yelena Vikhrova points out the benefit of the distance-learning system.
“The advantage of distance learning is that the children are tested by people who have no emotional connection with them,” Ms Vikhrova says. “Emotional contact is very high among rural teachers, because the classes are small and there are few staff. When I enter the classroom, the children immediately know if I’m in a good mood or not.
“I know what’s going on in their home lives, their medical history, and exactly how to interact with every pupil to get the best out of them. But this way, the remotely taken tests evaluate their knowledge only; it’s independent of emotion. Children have got used to this, and train themselves.”
For teachers, the system is beneficial, but also challenging. “Many of the teachers here are close to retirement age, and they have problems switching to the remote lessons system,” says Ms Kim.
Yulia Sidorova, a network teacher, says that despite the challenges of technology, the distance system is at least as reliable as traditional schooling.
“I prepare teaching materials for every lesson in advance and mail them out to the children,” says Ms Sidorova.
Elsewhere in the Moskovsky District at Gymnasium No 16, a Skype connection allows teachers and children to see each other. They assemble long before the class, socialise and show off their pets and younger siblings through webcams.
The project organisers’ dream is simple but ambitious: that one day, in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to gain admission to the world’s top universities without leaving your remote Siberian village.
How distance learning bridges the gap
The Moskovsky District is 51 teachers short because of rural depopulation, and many of its schools are undersubscribed.
One school in the village of Barlak has just 44 students. Without the distance learning option, students would have been learning physics, geography and IT from teachers unqualified or poorly qualified in those subjects.
Schools involved in the project receive laptops and mobile carts to recharge the computers and provide wireless internet. Students can use the computers after school if they don’t have the internet at home.
Take-home tests are graded by computer, but exercises with essay questions have to be sent to the teacher for grading. The difficulty level of subsequent assignments depends on the results of these tests.

How distance learning bridges the gap

The Moskovsky District is 51 teachers short because of rural depopulation, and many of its schools are undersubscribed.
One school in the village of Barlak has just 44 students. Without the distance learning option, students would have been learning physics, geography and IT from teachers unqualified or poorly qualified in those subjects.
Schools involved in the project receive laptops and mobile carts to recharge the computers and provide wireless internet. Students can use the computers after school if they don’t have the internet at home.
Take-home tests are graded by computer, but exercises with essay questions have to be sent to the teacher for grading. The difficulty level of subsequent assignments depends on the results of these tests.