Where and How to Expand Your Knowledge in Moscow
Offline project “University Saturdays”
This is an educational project for schoolchildren, students and adults, in which famous Moscow universities and museums take part. The project offers a wide range of lectures on design, air defense systems, computer simulation of rocket engines and information warriors with various lectures, seminars, trainings and workshops. It is convenient to register and check availability through the “Calendar” section on the project website. Within the framework of this project, teachers of leading universities will help everyone to master a particular area of interest.
More info http://us.educom.ru
Offline lectures at the “Garage Museum of Contemporary Art”
Along with a large number of paid specialised courses, there are free classes at the “Garage”. Here you can listen to informative stories on contemporary art, music and cinema, as well as take part in other exciting lectures and discussions. If you want a particular topic to be studied in detail, then there are whole cycles of lectures and discussions on specific topics at the “Garage”. To attend the events for free, you need to register on the museum's website.
More info https://garagemca.org/ru
Offline lectures at HSE
Since 2013, HSE is consistently organising public lectures. In addition to professional speakers represented by teachers, HSE lecture halls offer three permanent venues in Gorky Park, VDNH and the ZIL Cultural centre. Periodically, lectures are held in museums in Moscow, depending on the specifics of the lecture. Attendance of all these events is free for everyone.
More info https://www.hse.ru/lectorian/
TED Talks
This project is not only an offline lecturing platform led by outstanding people, motivators or speakers, but also a huge online platform with recordings of their speeches. Nowadays in addition to topics ranging from psychology to the universe study, TED is actively creating of playlists and courses of lessons, as well as supporting independent speakers who want to spread their ideas in those local communities that TED has not yet reached.
One key feature of TED is an advanced speech search filter that accurately guesses your preferences based on the length of the lecture, its subject, language, speaker or specific event.
More info https://www.ted.com/talks
Coursera
Coursera is an online platform aimed primarily at those who want to improve their professional skills, expand their understanding of any particular area of knowledge, and increase their attractiveness while applying for a job.
If you want to get a certificate of the course completion, you will have to do assignments, write essays and participate in discussions for several months. And if you do not want to submit assignments and just expect to listen to lectures and read additional materials, you still have to be registered for the course: courses begin at a certain time, year-round open and available courses are extremely rare. It is important to take into account that all the courses on this platform have tuition-fees but at the same time they are well structured and provide participants with really useful information.
More info https://www.coursera.org
Online project “Lectorium”
This is an educational project that combines two directions: a huge media library, where there are many interesting video lectures from leading teachers of Russian universities, and its own online courses. For example, there is a romantic course “Petersburg crossroads” with literary walks in St. Petersburg where you can learn about the city of Russian writers and poets.
And there is a practical course “Theory of money” or, for example, intriguing lectures on bioengineering or cybernetics. At the same time, the project provides both free and paid access, as well as two types of training on the course – in free mode or on a schedule.
More info https://www.lektorium.tv
Text by
Daria Borovkova