The research is dedicated to the features of providing mathematical training to would-be engineers through using the potential of mass open online courses. The article reveals the importance of mathematical training as the basis for forming the professional competence of engineers. A sociological poll among the participants of the educational process at Russian technical universities revealed high awareness of the professors about MOOCs (93.3%), while only 45.4% of students knew about such platforms. The undisputed leader by popularity among both professors (53.3%) and students (34.5%) is the project “National platform of open education”. The reasons impeding the use of mass open online courses are: the lack of spare time, the lack of skills of working in such format, and the lack of regulation for introducing the results of studying at MOOC into the formal educational process. At the same time, analysis of Coursera, EdX, Open Education, Intuit, Lektorium and Stepik platforms showed that, as of January 2021, 150 courses were available in the broad and specific mathematical domains. Intensification of using MOOCs in preparing for academic sessions may increase the efficiency of mastering knowledge and skills in solving practical mathematical tasks, which would improve training of the would-be engineers.

The research is devoted to the role of soft skills in training engineers in the sphere of metrology, standardization and quality management. Supra-professional competencies make a specialist more competitive in the labor market and later facilitates labor efficiency and sustainable development of the society as a whole, that is why the system of engineers’ education should include mastering time management, team work, and orient students towards developing their ability to handle stress and self-development. The article presents the results of a survey of students and practitioners in the sphere of metrology, standardization and quality management about the most important soft skills and the most popular ways to master them. To determine the features of forming soft skills in the Russian higher education system, we analyzed the federal state educational standards and researched curricula of 20 Russian universities training students in the said majors. The research allows concluding that supra-professional competencies are demanded by the students. We also found that the special disciplines forming soft skills are unevenly included into the curricula of universities, while there is a trend to increase the share of special courses training students for non-production activity as the education system is being reformed.

The article analyzes the features of education in Russia as a prerequisite of sustainable development under the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, using the distant learning technologies. The empirical basis of the research is the results of polling of 79 professors and 325 students. Both the professors and students emphasized such negative consequences of the distant format introduction in spring 2020 as the increased methodological and academic load and the increased time for preparation. Both parties of the educational process mark the advantages of the distant learning: saving money for transport and eating out, saving time for getting to and from university, possibility to use various formats of educational resources. 51% of the professors marked a decrease in the quality of students’ preparation in the distant regime; 35% of the students noted a worsened quality of educational services. Most of the professors (81%) and 33% of the students spoke for the combined format of traditional learning and mastering some part of the material with distant technologies. To a large extent, this is due to one of the qualitative differences of distant education from the traditional one–insufficient time and forms of personal communication between the participants of the educational process.

The research objective is to analyze the contemporary Russian platforms for massive online education, which provide the opportunity to master skills and obtain knowledge in compliance with the conception of polytechnic education: Open Education, Universarium, Lektorium, and Intuit. The research method is comparative analysis by criteria-number of visitors, area of training, target group, content specificity, including interaction means, systems of certification of the acquired knowledge. The authors come to the conclusion that most of the courses offered by the Universarium platform are aimed at schoolchildren, university entrants, and teachers. Open Education specializes in elaborating courses in compliance with federal state educational standards. Intuit specializes in IT sphere and provides additional education issuing documents of established form. Lektorium has significantly increased traffic since 2017, offering high quality content from the leading educational, commercial, and public organizations. An important characteristic common for all the studied platforms is a large variety of courses and educational programs, including those aimed at developing supradisciplinary universal soft skills, and elaboration and publication of MOOCs for various target groups.

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