Covid-19 has catalyzed positive disruptive change in the contemporary education system. It has accelerated the necessity of an innovation implementation process, technology-enhanced learning environment, customized and student-centered learning. It has enabled educators to tailor course content and pathways to students’ strengths, skills, interests and learning profiles. Adaptive learning is a contemporary method orchestrating human and digital resources to meet the needs of individual learners. The paper gives a review of the innovation process in education and the implementation of theoretical adaptive learning framework in Russian universities. It identifies innovators and early adopters who can assist two Russian Universities in attempts to implement new educational approaches. The authors also consider if there are any correlations between professors’ self-categorization and their practical application of adaptive learning in terms of the pace of learning, type of content presentation, knowledge state and students’ interests. Moreover, the researchers investigate and evaluate the Public Relations students’ perceived importance of factors affecting their learning: subject choice, subject knowledge acquisition, a type of subject content (text, audio, video), an individual pace in studying the subject, a lecturer’s guidance and group size. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.