TOMSK, Mar 23 – RIA Tomsk. The Rubius company opens its Planyway product for Tomsk universities - a team calendar bought by such universities as MIT and Oxford, co-founder of the company Sergey Koshevoy told RIA Tomsk; TPU vice-rector for digital affairs Aleksandr Fadeev specified that in the near future the tool will be integrated into the distance learning system.
Earlier it was reported that in the Tomsk region the first case of coronavirus infection COVID-19, according to which WHO announced a pandemic on March 11, was detected on March 18, and a high alert regime was introduced in the region on the same day. It is temporarily prohibited to hold public events, including entertainment and sports, all universities have been transferred to distance learning, and free attendance has been introduced in schools.
Point of connection
“We are actively working with the university environment, we teach at all universities of Tomsk and now we see how the transition to distance learning because of the pandemic has affected everyone. But the education system should not suffer because of force majeure - the country needs qualified personnel.
Rubius has a tool that can improve the processes of remote interaction between teachers and students - the Planyway team calendar, and we decided to open it for the education system", - co-founder of the Rubius company, head of the Planyway product Sergey Koshevoy said RIA Tomsk.
© предоставлено компанией Rubius
The class schedule at Planyway looks like a regular calendar. Inside the class card there is a link to a webinar, complete list of participants, materials for the lesson and homework. Typically, access costs 800 rubles per month for one team of five people.
According to him, Planyway - is a web-service for teamwork management, which is already used by Oxford, Stanford, MIT and more than hundreds of leading universities in the world. Thanks to this tool, it’s convenient for teachers to schedule, organize online lectures and assign homework. Students see a class schedule, receive training materials and submit work. Access is available from smartphone, from tablet, and from laptop.
"Planyway - is a magnificent Tomsk development, which is used by leading universities in the world. We are interested in it and will do everything to implement it at Tomsk Polytechnic University as soon as possible. Rubius is ready to begin integration, we are now coordinating technical communication protocols", - TPU vice-rector for digital affairs Aleksandr S. Fadeev told.
According to him, the main advantage of Planyway is that this software product gives greater freedom in the interaction of students and teachers:
“For distance learning, which Tomsk Polytechnic University switched to due to quarantine, we use different tools, for example, we have a very cool electronic timetable system. Planyway will allow to coordinate all systems - file transfer, social networks, links to online courses and so on - in one place, attach them to each lesson. All this is done in a modern, very simple interface.
This is a kind of connection point between the teacher and the student, which we were sorely lacking, especially for teaching extramural students. And what’s pleasant, this was done in Tomsk, by Tomsk company, many employees of which, by the way, graduated from Tomsk Polytechnic", - Fadeev said.
Koshevoy added that since Planyway is being developed in Tomsk, in case of lack of some functionality, programmers will be able to quickly fine-tune the product to product to the specific processes of Tomsk universities. “Not only Tomsk universities, colleges and schools, but also all institutions of the Russian education system can count on free access, for this purpose it is necessary to write us at sergey.koshevoy@rubius.com”, - he emphasized.
Scale up to the country
Also, the Planyway product is being tested at Tomsk State University (TSU), on the basis of the International Scientific and Methodological Center for Mathematics, Computer Science and Digital Technology (ISMC).
"The ISMC - is a joint project, which we started to implement together with TUSUR and TPU. The center was created within the framework of the federal project "Personnel for the Digital Economy". A special role in its work will be assigned to advanced distance learning technologies, which today, due to the circumstances, are in great demand.
In order to organize remote work without losing high quality of education, new effective tools and approaches are needed. One of them - is the Planyway teamwork web application, which we now began to test with students and postgraduate students of the TSU Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science", - the director of the TSU Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (IAMCS) Alexander Zamyatin said.
Anton Kudinov, technical director of Rubius, added that they had long been preparing the implementation of Planyway with TSU to organize the educational process:
“The mass transition to distance learning due to coronavirus has shown: it’s time to accelerate. We will implement it, take into account the needs of the university and make Planyway even more useful for the Russian education system. Together with the ISMC we will be able to scale our cooperation experience to all educational institutions of the country to help them organize online learning and work with extramural students".