THE MAIN DIRECTIONS OF IMPROVING THE USE OF THE SUPER SERVICE “ADMISSION TO THE UNIVERSITY ONLINE” IN THE WORK OF THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTE OF KAZAN STATE AGRARIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Digital transformation is increasingly affecting various areas of higher education. Digital services and tools significantly change the principles of interaction between the admissions committee and the applicant, the teacher and the student, the higher education institution and the regulatory authorities. The process of introducing the super service “Admission to university online”, which began in 2019, was supposed to change the mechanism for submitting applications to universities. It was assumed that applicants would be able to upload the necessary documents to the service and enroll in the selected educational institution without the need for a personal visit. In the future, the super service was supposed to replace traditional forms of filing documents. However, by 2022, the submission of paper documents directly to the university is still the main and most popular mechanism for interaction between the applicant and the admissions committee. This work is a continuation of a study conducted since 2020 at Kazan State Agrarian University, the purpose of which is to identify the main obstacles to the effective use of the superservis “Admission to university online”. The paper presents and compares with last year’s results the data of a newly conducted survey of applicants who visited the university in person. The identified main reasons for refusing to use the digital service are the same, but the share of applicants who used this mechanism for submitting documents to the university is growing. The result of the study was proposals for the university’s admissions committees to more effectively implement digital tools and obtain the necessary competencies when interacting with applicants through superswervis. The proposed activities include the use of educational computer classes to access the super service, online counseling of applicants by university teachers, a chatbot for automatic answers to the most popular questions and the holding of various competitions and quizzes to raise awareness of the possibilities of the super service in social networks and in career guidance work. The authors' proposals should help the admissions committee to increase the level of customer focus and improve the image component of Kazan State Agrarian University.