In the new academic year, the course “Educational Data Analytics”, Moscow City University will offer a new course called “Educational Data Analytics.” This course, created in collaboration with Yandex, aims to teach future teachers how to work with large amounts of data collected from systems like the Moscow Electronic School. Students will learn how to use tools like Data Science and artificial intelligence to analyse educational data, visualise it, and automate repetitive tasks. Moscow City University will be one of the first universities partnering with Yandex for this initiative.
Ekaterina Lavrenova, Director of MCU’s Institute of Digital Education, Associate Professor, shared her view:
Nowadays, information systems gather a lot of data about students, including their academic performance, attendance, and extracurricular activities. We want to teach young people how to find valuable information in this data and use it to personalise education. Our aim is to train teachers who are prepared for the challenges of the digital age and can use advanced technologies to enhance the quality of education.
Thanks to the new course, teachers will be able to build an educational process based on the data obtained. For example, knowing that a child attends a scientific and technical creativity circle, a teacher will be able to give him applied mathematics problems, showing the practical significance of the subject. In this way, data analysis will help to find relationships between different aspects of a student’s life and use them to improve the quality of learning.
The new course will help teachers use data to improve an educational process. For example, if a student is involved in a science club, the teacher can give them math problems that show how it applies to real-life situations. By analysing data, teachers can find connections between different aspects of a student’s life and use that information to make learning better.
Daria Kozlova, Director of Yandex Education, commented:
In today’s world, AI and Data Science are becoming essential in almost every profession. Having skills in data analysis, working with neural networks, and other related abilities greatly increases job opportunities. According to a study by Yandex Education and the European University, professionals in social and humanitarian fields who possess IT skills earn about twice as much on average compared to those who don’t. We believe it is important for graduates in humanities to learn how to use data analysis tools and generative technologies to solve everyday tasks. That’s why we are working with universities to provide them with the opportunity to acquire these skills.
The new educational module will be added to the current course called “Information and Telecommunication Technologies in Education” at MCU for undergraduate students. This course already includes hands-on activities related to using artificial intelligence in education. Now, the course will be expanded to include practical tasks focused on analysing educational data. Students will learn how to create dashboards, find patterns, identify relationships, and make decisions based on the information they gather.
Photo: MCU