Three strategic priorities of the European Union such as Open Innovation, Open Science, and Openness to the World reveal that higher education focused on training of students as prospective specialists needed by society and production orient higher education how to change. In higher education the transition from distance learning to on-line learning has started. For on-line learning in higher education, webinars are becoming an indispensable tool. However, educators’ opinion on webinars in higher education has not been analyzed. The aim of the present contribution is to analyze educators‘ opinion on webinars in higher education underpinning elaboration of a hypothesis on use of webinars in on-line educational environment within higher education. The meaning of such key concepts as webinar, opinion, on-line learning and on-line educational environment is studied. Moreover, the study shows how the steps of the process are related: identifying webinars → defining educators’ opinion → empirical study → conclusions. The empirical study was carried out in September 2015. The sample included 58 educators from the teacher training institution, namely Dr. Sivanthi Aditanar College of Education in India. The study results demonstrate that the educators’ opinions on webinars in higher education are homogeneous. A hypothesis on use of webinars in on-line educational environment within higher education is elaborated. Directions of further research are proposed.
In the era of digital economy, there is an urgent need in highly qualified engineering and Information Technology (IT) specialists in Kazakhstan. The aim of the research is to analyse the needs of higher education in the field of engineering and IT in Kazakhstan underpinning elaboration of implications for higher education in the field of engineering and IT in Kazakhstan. The empirical study was carried out in October 2019. Exploratory study was implemented. Interpretive paradigm was employed in the present work. Non-structured interview served as the basis for data collection. Content analysis was performed for data analysis. Findings of theoretical analysis allow extending three-component model on needs analysis, namely experts’ perspective, educators’ perspective, and students’ perspective by the fourth component, namely community perspective. Implications for higher education in Kazakhstan are formulated as following: universities delivering higher education in the field of engineering and IT in Kazakhstan need to balance academic and practical components in their study programmes; interaction between educators and students, on the one side, as well as enterprises, companies and industry, on the other side, should be enhanced in higher education in the field of engineering and IT in Kazakhstan. Directions of future work are proposed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.