Preparatory courses with the participation of lecturers from State University of Shirak

In order to meet the challenge of the time and concerned about the issues of implementing educational activities and the quality of educational services provided at the University in the new 2020-2021 academic year, a preparatory training program for SUSh academic staff and students has been developed on the initiative of Educational and Methodological Process Management Center of State University of Shirak. The preparations for organizing the online courses on one platform were carried out before the start of the new academic year.

From August 4 to 26, 2020, courses were organized for the academic staff of the University.

The course aimed at developing the skills of the University academic staff to organize online teaching in the ZOOM software environment.

ZOOM platform is currently considered to be the most convenient for holding lectures online at State University of Shirak, based on the rich palette of the basic tools and taking into account the simplicity of the software interface, although the Moodle platform and in general other means of conducting online lessons were used by the lecturers in the previous semester.

The preparatory course was conducted online, with a pre-approved schedule and program, taking into account the requirements of modern education. 4 meetings were envisaged and held with each professional chair with a total duration of 8 hours.

The courses were conducted by the laboratory assistant of the Chair of Mathematics, Physics and Information Technologies of the University, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences N. Nazaryan, during the lectures presenting the interface of the software environment, the toolkit, conducting trainings aimed at acquiring practical skills.

In order to make the toolkit provided by the ZOOM platform fully applicable and the organization of lectures on the online platform as accessible as possible, a course is also being conducted at the moment with the senior students of courses, intending to have the appropriate outcomes, such as:

• to create a new Zoom account;
• to create and edit contact list in Zoom software environment;
• to create a group with an appropriate name based on the contact list;
• to add or remove users to or from a group;
• to organize and make group calls, share files, etc.

The courses with the student groups are conducted by Gevorg Asatryan, Deputy Director of the Library- Academic Consultations, Innovations and IT Center.

The course is completed with a guide created for the academic staff and students, which is available at the following link: “Methodological guide for using the ZOOM program”.