Educational collaboration of Russian libraries: The possibilities and prospects

Collaboration is one of the most efficient forms of cooperation within the system of continuing library and information education. The study is based on general scientific methods, including that of institutional analysis. The study subject is collaboration as an instrument of interaction and joint efforts, wшер the results to be actualized through exchange of knowledge, experience and skills in a specific educational ecosystem. The study object is collaboration within the system of continuing library professional education. With resource, organizational and process approaches, the essence of the concept of "collaboration" is identified; the focus is made on its special institutional structure and role in efficient interaction between the subjects of knowledge economy. The essence of the definition of "educational collaboration" is revealed, taking into account the inherent features and various individual approaches to its interpretation. The experience in building the collaboration of library continuing education providers, i.e. "LENINKA" Corporate University of the Russian State Library and Department of Continuing Professional Education of the State Public Scientific and Technological Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Branch, is analyzed (20192020). The special role of collaboration in providing continuing professional education to Russian library specialists is emphasized. It is demonstrated that collaboration in education facilitates co-organization of professional communities, render their activities more efficient and highly demanded within the digital economy and knowledge society.

Automated Orchestration of Online Educational Collaboration in Cloud-based Environments

Integrated collaboration environments (ICEs) are widely used by corporations to increase productivity by fostering groupwide and interpersonal collaboration. In this article, we discuss the enhancements of such environment needed to build an educational ICE (E-ICE) that addresses the specific needs of educational users. The motivation for the research was the Małopolska Educational Cloud (MEC) project conducted by AGH University and its partners. The E-ICE developed by MEC project fosters collaboration between universities and high schools by creating an immersive virtual collaboration space. MEC is a unique project due to its scale and usage domain. Multiple online collaboration events are organized weekly between over 150 geographically scattered institutions. Such events, aside from videoconferencing, require various services. The MEC E-ICE is a complex composition of a significant number of services and various terminals that require very specific configuration and management. In this article, we focus on a model-driven approach to automating the organization of online meetings in their preparation, execution, and conclusion phases. We present a conceptual model of E-ICE-supported educational courses, introduce a taxonomy of online educational services, identify planes and modes of their operation, as well as discuss the most common collaboration patterns. The MEC E-ICE, which we present as a case study, is built in accordance with the presented, model-driven approach. MEC educational services are described in a way that allows for converting the declarative specification of E-ICE application models into platform-independent models, platform-specific models, and, finally, working sets of orchestrated service instances. Such approach both reduces the level of technical knowledge required from the end-users and considerably speeds up the construction of online educational collaboration environments.

An Educational Collaboration Between Russian-Born US Physicians and Young Russian Oncologists in Evidence-Based Medicine: The Higher School of Oncology

The authors have requested that this preprint be removed from Research Square.