St Petersburg University online course "Neurolinguistics" is the first winner of the international GMA Awards
The board meeting of the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance has been held in Milan. It was held in both full-time and hybrid formats. It summed up the results of the GMA Awards. It brought together 12 educational organisations from China, Mongolia, Italy, Russia, Chile, Thailand, and New Zealand. Summing up on the results of the assessment of applications by experts, the online course "Neurolinguistics" was recognised as the first winner of the international award. The course was developed by St Petersburg University Professor Tatiana Chernigovskaya.
In 2023, the Global MOOC Alliance launched the GMA Awards to recognise high-quality courses to further promote knowledge sharing and capacity building. GMA focuses its first-year project on STEM fields, combining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
St Petersburg University is a co-founder and the only representative of Russia in the Global MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) Alliance, where it acts as the leader of the Russia’s online education market.
Among the submitted applications were courses and projects on the following topics: crystal chemistry; forensic medicine; neurobiology; machine learning; cloud technologies and Big Data frameworks; smart home technologies; and aerospace technologies to name just a few. Following the results of the assessment of applications by experts from the professional and student communities, the first international GMA Awards was awarded to the online course "Neurolinguistics" of St Petersburg University.
The online course "Neurolinguistics" is developed under the guidance of Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Director of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at St Petersburg University and Member of the Russian Academy of Education. The course introduces the main provisions and tasks of modern neurolinguistics, i.e. a science that combines the methods and paradigms of linguistics and neuropsychology. In just the first week after announcing its launch in 2020, more than 27,000 students registered for the course. The unique course is set to introduce the neurophysiological basis of human speech production. It is designed for a wide audience: students and specialists in the field of psychology, neurology, linguistics and physiology and anyone interested in this topic. A necessary preparation requirement for the course is an introductory course in linguistics or neurophysiology.
The course "Neurolinguistics" has repeatedly received various awards in international contests. In 2020, it was recognised as the winner of the EdCrunch Award OOC and entered the world top 100 of the Class Central’s Best Online Courses.
The course teams that have won GMA Awards will be invited to educational events of the alliance, including Online Education Dialogue 2024, round tables on current topics in the field of digitalisation of higher education and the development of relevant technologies. Their participants will exchange experiences with colleagues from all over the world to contribute to a joint search for ways to further develop online education.