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The universal transition to online learning has opened new opportunities for international applicants to get to know HSE University. Below, Deputy Vice Rector Marina Kozak outlines the programmes and opportunities available at HSE that help applicants choose an educational track and assess their capabilities.

Students need digital skills, both in life and in their future work. But many universities are not yet ready to provide students with them, despite the current circumstances in which universities have had to transition to online learning due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The development of online formats has been uneven: there are bright leaders and the rest modestly ‘stand aside’. They lack resources, confidence in digital education, and a regulatory framework. At the eSTARS International Conference organised by HSE University in partnership with Coursera, experts discussed the challenges of digitalisation in higher education.

Online learning for schoolchildren — a temporary solution authorities have implemented due to the COVID-19 epidemic — has generated a lot of heated debate. Families worry about the quality and outcomes of online learning, and teachers worry about the excessive workload. School heads have their own headache about how to organise the remote learning. A year has passed since the start of the pandemic, and students have been attending their classes online since March — it is already possible to take stock and look at the situation in a comprehensive and impartial manner, which is what a team of HSE researchers has done. Here are the main results of their study and their proposed solutions to the most pressing problems.

Mikhail Guschin, Research Fellow at the HSE University Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis of the Faculty of Computer Science, was appointed coordinator of the machine learning and statistics working group in the LHCb Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). He will be the only representative of a Russian University among the coordinators for the experiment’s working groups.

International prospective students applying for Master's programmes at HSE University can now get a jump start on the admissions process and get a sense of their chances of being accepted to HSE. There is no need to wait till summer or to come to Moscow.

In assessing an employee’s performance, employers often listen to his immediate supervisor or colleagues, and these opinions can be highly subjective. Sergey Stepanov, an economist from HSE University, has shown that biased evaluations can actually benefit employers. An article substantiating this finding was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

On December 4, the International Advisory Board of the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge of HSE University met for its annual meeting. It was an anniversary event, as was the X Foresight Conference that preceded it. Largely thanks to the online format, the assembled board was the most representative of the field in its history. Experts from 20 international partner centres assessed ISSEK’s activities over the past year and proposed a wide range of topics for new research.

HSE University Student Development Office held its traditional Charity Xmas festival from December 1th to 5th. The event was open to HSE University students, staff and graduates, and anybody else who wished to attend. This year for the first time, it was online, but nonetheless brought together a large number of guests and speakers. The HSE News Service spoke about volunteering and charity in the Coronavirus era.