City manager’s resources and optimization of the online education system

Abstract

This paper attempts to assess the resources of the City Manager to optimize the system of online education. The need to develop a Russian platform for the implementation of online education is justified by highlighting the main problems: technical, organizational, and pedagogical. It has been established that the problems described above are related primarily to the platforms on which the online education process is implemented. The authors evaluate the functionality of popular services used by Russian universities and conclude that their tools do not meet the goals of online education and do not allow realizing its potential. A pilot concept of an online-education platform, which is supposed to be created within the framework of public-private partnership, is presented. It is recommended to realize large projects, which require significant investments, as a part of cooperation of authorities, business community and science, and the emphasis is made on this aspect in the process of project concept creation. The main forms of interaction between the actors involved and the areas of their responsibility are considered, recommendations for the selection of the most appropriate procedure for the development of the platform for online education that meets the needs of students and teachers are given. It is concluded that such an initiative will help to overcome the main obstacles facing online education and bring it to a new level by combining the efforts of government and business.