On April 23, 2025, UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education and the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI) jointly launched two free online training courses in Russian: “Generative Artificial Intelligence as a Teaching Tool in Higher Education” and “Prompt Engineering for Higher Education Teachers”. The training courses were presented on the webinar, which brought together more than 1,000 teachers and administrative staff from educational institutions from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and other countries.
The webinar opened with welcoming speeches by Mr. Tao Zhan, Director of UNESCO IITE, and Ms. Xiaohan Bi, Deputy Director of UNESCO-ICHEI. The liders of partnering organizations emphasized the importance of effective integrating artificial intelligence into education and noted the fruitful cooperation between UNESCO IITE and UNESCO-ICHEI in developing digital competencies of teachers. The webinar was moderated by Ms. Tatiana Murovana, programme specialist at UNESCO IITE.
The new online training courses were presented by the author, Associate Professor of Perm State University and expert in media education Mr. Ivan Pechishchev. In his presentation, Mr Pechishchev outlined the capabilities and limitations of generative AI in the context of educational practice, briefly described the areas of AI use in teaching and learning, and gave specific examples of using this technology to perform various pedagogical tasks. The structure and content of the new online courses designed to help teachers significantly improve their level of AI literacy were also presented, and practical recommendations were given for the effective use of generative AI tools.
These online courses are available on the educational platform of the International Institute of Online Education (IIOE). The Russian-language version of the platform is being actively developed within the cooperation of UNESCO IITE and UNESCO-ICHEI. New features of the platform were presented at the webinar by Ms. Lan Yang, Program Officer of the IIE Management Center, and Mr. Yifan Xu, Course Product Manager of the IIE Management Center.
The online courses are available free of charge to everyone at any time convenient. Upon completion of the courses, a certificate in Russian and English from UNESCO IITE and the International Institute of Online Education will be awarded.
Links to courses (to access the courses, you must register on the educational platform iioe.org):
Generative Artificial Intelligence as a Teaching Tool in Higher Education
Prompt Engineering for Higher Education Teachers
