A recent survey conducted by VK Messenger and VK Education reveals that over half of Russian students stay connected daily through educational chats. The data, shared in the company’s press release, shows that 53% of students communicate with peers in dedicated learning chats on a daily basis, highlighting how central these channels have become to classroom collaboration.
Across the student community, 95% report participating in group chats with classmates. About 80% say they reach out several times a week, with more than half stating that conversations occur every day. In addition, 54% regularly exchange messages around the clock, underscoring the round-the-clock nature of peer support and study coordination in the digital era.
When it comes to sharing study materials, 74% of respondents send training files through chat several times weekly, and 15% do so daily. A significant portion, 55%, perceive the ability to transmit large volumes of data via chat as a clear advantage for solving academic problems, especially when coordinating group work or distributing large readings and datasets.
Since the current academic year began, VK Messenger has seen the creation of roughly 16 million group chats among students alone. A substantial share of these conversations originates in Moscow, accounting for about a quarter of the total. The top five cities continuing to drive chat activity include St. Petersburg with 12%, Novosibirsk at 7%, and both Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg at 5% each, reflecting regional patterns in digital collaboration among university communities. In total, students have transmitted about 274 terabytes of data through VK Messenger chats since fall began, illustrating the scale of everyday information exchange in higher education networks.
The findings come from a November 2023 survey involving 1,200 students from various Russian universities, offering a snapshot of how digital communication tools are shaping modern learning environments, peer collaboration, and information distribution across campuses.
Earlier research also highlighted the popularity of messaging features among teachers, signaling a broader shift toward integrated communication platforms in education. (Source: VK Messenger press release.)