The English Version of Ural Federal University Website Enters the Top-10 of the Best Web Portals of Russian Universities

Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation, December 11, 2015 (Newswire.com) - For almost three years the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) has been analyzing the websites of Russian universities. Now it has released an official report which includes the first ranking of Electronic Internationalization of the Russian universities.

Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation, December 11, 2015 (Newswire) -​ UrFU took the 7th position and became one of the two federal universities in the top-10 of the ranking. The first position was taken by National Research University Higher School of Economics.

According to RIAC experts, the main task of the English websites of universities is to establish effective communication with foreign target groups, which include prospective and current students, graduates, researchers and scientists, partners, media, ranking agencies, etc. While Russian universities have technically advanced sites, content management is the main problem in the creation and support of universities’ online resources.

In order to evaluate the content of the English versions of the websites, RIAC had developed a system of 108 parameters divided into 16 blocks, each representing a specific functional aspect of the website. Based on these parameters, the information about the content of 45 leading Russian universities’ websites had been collected and quantified. The websites of 11 foreign universities from the QS Ranking top-100, for which English is not the primary language of education (Franch, German, Chinese, South Korean universities, etc.) had also been analyzed.

The obtained data was then summarized in Electronic Internationalization Index, which became the base for the rating.

The full versions of the rating and the report (in Russian) are available at the RIAC website (Russian).