KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Professional development courses meant for the teaching staff of Armenian State Pedagogical University have started at the University. 

“Training is not only obligatory, but also necessary in this rapidly changing world,” the organizers of the training courses say calling attention to current global processes.

Greeting the participants of the training course, ASPU Rector Ruben Mirzakhanyan expressed hope that the training would not be formal, and the knowledge acquired during the course would be applied in practice, giving benefits to both students and professors.

The rector particularly called the participants’ attention to modern information technologies and said they are the imperative of modern times; hence the trainees should do their utmost to ensure that no problems emerge at the University connected with modern IT.

ASPU Vice-Rector Srbuhi Gevorgyan assured the presentees that the training program was compiled after studying the gaps and needs [in the sphere] and called on everyone to single out problems during the course and come up with their own ideas and proposals. She added that the training courses, which are a great help to scientists and educators and give them methodological support, will be ongoing. 

Kamo Vardanyan, Director of the University’s Research Center, stressed the importance of training within the framework of current educational reforms. Educators need to be trained in order to ensure the quality of education. 

Educational reforms at the University, philosophy of education, educational technologies, instructional methods to promote active learning and teaching, student-centered teaching methods, psychology in universities: in this list, the most important are information and communication systems [as an education technology],  distance learning, presentations, preparation and display of slides.

“Today, we cannot imagine any sphere, including the education sector, without modern information technologies,” said Hamlet Harutyunyan, one of the training specialists who heads the Department of Informatics and its Teaching Methods. 

Of the 817 lecturers and professors working at the ASPU, 314 have been included in the first phase of training. There were all recruited on a comparative basis. 

Up to 50 lecturers are involved in the first phase of the training course consisting of 60 hours. They will be trained by leading specialists of the sphere representing the ASPU, Yerevan State University, Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University, Ministry of Education, World Bank and experts on Microsoft's education partnership program with Armenia.

During the training course, the attendees will be given tests every 30 hours to check their knowledge on the subject matter.