On September 23, a round table “New Digital Models in Higher Education in the Socio-Humanitarian Field” was held at St. Petersburg State University, which took place during the All-Russian scientific and practical conference “Social Sciences and the Development of Higher Education.” Participants discussed the digitalization of educational programs, the impact of AI technologies on diplomacy, the need to increase digital competencies and media literacy, threats to national security and other pressing issues.
The director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, Andrey Vorobyev, addressed the round table. Andrey Vorobyev together with a lecturer at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University Ilona Stadnik presented a joint educational project of the Center and St. Petersburg State University - Summer School on Internet Governance. This year the school was held for the fourth time and attracted the attention of many young professionals: 298 applications were submitted to participate in it and 40 people successfully completed their training.
The speakers also spoke about the master’s program “Information Culture of Digital Transformation” (ICDT), prepared by the basic department of the Russian Association for Networks and Services (RANS) at MTUCI. The first graduation of the program took place this summer. Based on the results of training, 15 master degree students from the 2021 cohort successfully defended their final qualifying thesis (13 works with an “excellent” rating, 2 works with a “good” rating) and received state-issued diplomas, 9 of which with honors.
“The goal of the Summer School on Internet Governance as an additional education program of St. Petersburg State University is to introduce international affairs specialists and other specialists in the humanitarian spectrum to the technical aspects of the Internet, to explain how technical factors influence the development of policy and regulation at the national and international level. At the same time, I would like to note my colleagues from MTUCI, who, together with RANS, launched a master’s program with the opposite task: to prepare technicians for work in international organizations such as ITU, ISO and others, and to understand the political and diplomatic landscape of the problems being discussed. I would like to see the development of similar programs, both short in the format of additional courses and master’s programs, in other large universities in Russia,” said Ilona Stadnik.
