Online education has been called “disruptive technology” that has the potential to significantly change the institution of higher education, its function, and global relevance. This study aims to comprehensively consider various formats of online education, in particular the format of massive open online courses, in cooperation with the institution of higher education and formulate criteria for the university’s success in online education and possible ways to further use data on the contribution of universities to online education.
Online Education as a Reason for Creating Online Learning Platforms
Modern domestic higher education is going through another difficult period caused by the pandemic, which led to the self-isolation of participants in the educational process and a change in the activities of educational organizations. In our opinion, this became a catalyst for intensifying discussions about the place and role of distance technologies, e-learning, and their relationship with traditional methods of teaching. Without intending to consider the entire range of issues related to this issue, the authors would like to draw the attention of the professional community to some of them.
Also, a fairly large number of universities post videos of their lectures in various media libraries. This format, however, is gradually losing popularity: if a student chooses between an hour and a half video lecture and a structured convenient MOOC course, then the choice will be obvious – in favor of the latter. The only example of a successful long video format (out of the world) is TedX, but it is based on the participation of celebrity professors and the use of special filming techniques to keep viewers’ attention.
Which Is the Best Online Learning Platform to Use?
OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software) has already been evaluated by thousands of streamers. It is a completely free and open-source software that can be used for video recording as well as streaming without any restrictions. There are versions for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
OBS Studio allows the user to broadcast up to 8 scenes without loss of video and audio quality. Switching between them is carried out smoothly due to transitions. A set of filters (chromakey, mask, color correction, etc.) for video sources is available.
There is also a built-in audio mixer with an intuitive interface designed to work with sound: noise reduction, sound amplification, compression, etc. OBS Studio works with all popular streaming platforms: YouTube, Twitch, Hitbox, and others. The program has a nice interface and a convenient settings panel for quick configuration.
Pros:
- compatibility with any streaming platform;
- the function of saving recordings of broadcasts on a PC;
- support for filters, plugins;
- built-in sound correction;
- convenient language interface;
- technical support and community;
Minuses:
- standard functions do not allow adding the same video stream to two scenes at the same time;
- adding a creeping line is available only through a filter.
It is not by chance that we focus on the electronic educational platform as a mandatory component of the electronic information and educational environment of the university. In the current conditions, educational organizations, where platforms have already worked, managed to stabilize the situation, and, without losing quality, carry out the educational process, thereby ensuring their stability.
As we noted earlier, each site has its own home page, which contains general information about the owner of the site and the information presented on it. When you open a site in an Internet browser, it is its home page that is displayed.