Scientific Institute of Advanced Learning Technologies at Tomsk State University was created as a response to the challenges associated with the technologization and digitalization of the world, with the need to ensure equal access to quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for everyone.
The mission of the Institute is to transform learning and teaching (new learning and teaching) in a modern university. Such transformation involves creating and upgrading original technologies, unique content and formats, and is based on fundamental research in the field of education and the development of new educational technologies. Today, there is a diverse range of breakthrough technologies: from LMSs, chat-bots, drones, and robots to adaptive learning, virtual reality, machine learning, and big data analysis. When dealing with technologies, we adhere to the following principles:
- When introducing new technologies, we are not guided by the technology as such, no matter how compelling it may be, but by the problem, request, or university need (related to students, lecturers, employers and other stakeholders) and its educational strategy and mission.
- When implementing new technologies, we employ the TPACK framework (Mishra and Koehler, Michigan State University) that emphasises the importance of considering technology in combination with 1) the transformation of educational content; 2) the transformation of pedagogical approaches. It is the intersection of technological knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge where the genuinely effective educational transformation and innovation take place.
- Technologies will never replace humans in the main. Educator and learner remain central to the learning process, whereas technologies enhance it, taking on the routine, assisting, accompanying, providing resources, and making room for the most important experience that can only happen in the space of interpersonal communication.