Uchitelskaia Gazeta: Tatiana Chernigovskaya’s course receives the first international GMA Awards

The annual meeting of the members of the Board of the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance was held in Milan both in face-to-face and hybrid formats from 14 to 16 December. The main topic was artificial intelligence in education. In 2023, the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance launched a new project, i.e. the GMA Awards, to recognise high-quality courses to promote knowledge sharing and capacity building. GMA focuses its first-year project on STEM fields, combining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The contest brought together 12 educational organisations from seven countries. 

Among them were the following: China, Mongolia, Italy, Russia, Chile, Thailand, and New Zealand. 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. Applications from each organisation were evaluated by two experts: from the professional community of the university (an educator or an administration representative) and from the student community. 

Following the results of the expert evaluation of applications, the first international GMA Award was awarded to the online course "Neurolinguistics" developed at St Petersburg University.

This course was developed by researchers under the guidance of Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Doctor of Biology, Doctor of Philology, Member of the Russian Academy of Education, and Director of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at St Petersburg University. The course introduces the main provisions and tasks of neurolinguistics. This science bridges the methods and paradigms of linguistics and neuropsychology. 

The course discusses the basic units and principles of organisation of the nervous system during human speech production and mental activity. The course focuses on the neurophysiological aspects of the acquisition of native and foreign languages. You can learn about clinical research in the field of speech disorders, reading and writing disabilities, and speech disorders in mental illnesses. It also introduces the history of neurolinguistics, modern neurolinguistic techniques, and a number of studies in this area. 

The course "Neurolinguistics" has received a number of awards at international contests. It is aimed at a wide range of students to equip them with a fundamental understanding of the neurophysiological basis of human speech production.