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Researchers trying to compare economic data of the USSR and capitalist countries face questions of the comprehensiveness, accessibility, and reliability of data on Soviet economic production and growth. At an online seminar hosted by the HSE University International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences, Assistant Professor Ilya Voskoboynikov (Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University) presented an overview of available approaches to studying the absolute size of the Soviet economy and its growth rates.

2020 has definitely become a year of online learning. Children of all ages, as well as many adults, have had to study remotely. This has allowed researchers to look at education accessibility problems from a new perspective and evaluate how the massive transition to online learning aligns with existing norms and attitudes toward limiting screen time. Nadezhda Knyaginina and Evgenii Puchkov, researchers from the Education Law Laboratory at the HSE Institute of Education talked about their lab’s research on this matter.

Light is a perfect medium according to Marshall McLuhan, who was the first to seek a deeper understanding of electronic communications. Modern media, however, have become the means not only for conveying facts but also for managing meanings — which is why the current agenda is shaped, to some extent, by the media. Dmitry Elovsky, Deputy Chief Editor at Dozhd TV and graduate of the Applied Politics programme at HSE, told Success Builder about the media’s strength as the so-called ‘fourth estate,’ how journalism is taught in the West, why working in Russian media is the province of the young and why the risk of ‘burnout’ is so great in this country.

The majority of Russian university teachers were prepared for the emergency and online teaching during the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown period. However, they consider remote teaching more time-consuming and less convenient than face-to-face instruction. This is evidenced by a recent survey of the HSE Centre for Institutional Research.

The HSE Institute of Education has opened a Joint Department with Skyeng to create faster and more effective tools in online education, research, and specialist training in the field of educational technology.

The final lecture in the course ‘Teach4HSE: Seven Key Principles of Teaching Excellence’ was delivered by Prof. Vadim Radaev, First Vice Rector of HSE University. His talk about modern problems in teaching and their potential solutions was available to anyone interested. This open talk was held online via YouTube and Zoom, with over 400 teachers from different HSE campuses, as well as representatives of other universities, attending the event.

Times of Crisis and Opportunity is the title of the OECD Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Outlook published in January. The document focuses on STI responses to the pandemic while assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on science and technology. Mikhail Gershman, Deputy Director of the Centre of Science, Technology, Innovation and Information Policy, discusses the contribution of the Institute of Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) to the Outlook and discusses some aspects of ISSEK’s long-standing partnership with OECD.

More than a hundred countries have already declared the achievement of ‘zero emissions with the exception of absorption’ to be their primary goal in the fight against climate change. For Russia, whose primary export is fossil fuels, the global rejection of hydrocarbons poses great risks. Experts discussed the issue at the research seminar, ‘Decarbonization as a Global Trend: Changing the Economic Landscape and Its Importance for Companies’, which was jointly organized by HSE University and the Association of European Businesses.