Gavrishina O.N.

 

Kemerovo State university, Kemerovo, Russia

 

Information technologies as a means of university student professional competence formation

 

 

Nowadays there is a great demand for specialists who are able to solve economic tasks based on the wide application of information and computer technology in their professional activity. This is why the problem of university responsibility for professional preparation of specialist having computer skills in the context of the chosen profession sphere is becoming crucial. It should be mentioned that during the years of university studies students must have acquired the need for self-perfection and have formed the self-educating skills. There should be present the motivation of studying, development of the need to evaluate their own competitiveness, the incentive to get the knowledge and skills of computer application in the sphere of future professional activity. To stimulate these, the creation of professional-oriented environment should take place within the university by integrating special and information disciplines. Such integration requires great methodological work from the professors’ part of new software programs development as well as provision with new electronic methodological complexes.  By involving students to use computer technology in educational process, the formation of informative culture and system thinking along with self-education skills in computer technology takes place.

No less important is the students’ development of self-control skills. This contributes to creative activity, to labour-loving, teaches persistency and desire to reach goals. One of the forms of self-control organization and knowledge control is the usage of computer complexes based on module principles of teaching and controlling software programs  as well as the system of knowledge rating assessment in the sphere of computer technologies which  contributes to regular educational work of students during the semester.

 It must noted that due to variety of rating and heterogeneity of computer preparation of students it is necessary to appeal to personality-oriented approach in education. It is important to create the environment for every student for critical comprehension of the received information. At this point independent work of students plays a very essential role as it stimulates the development of analytical research skills on the topic as well as work with literature and internet resources. If in the process of learning “Computer science” course computer and software present the subject of educational activity with the acquisition of computer usage skills, then on the senior courses during mastering of special disciplines connected to professional activity, this subject turns into the methods of solving tasks both professional and educational.  This transition of subject into means justifies the development of professional thinking in context of computer technology.

The application of computer technology during the whole process of learning in the institution of higher education along with integration of information and special disciplines contributes to realization of didactic principles of education (such as scientific character, system, availability and consciousness), adds new some new content to them and proposes the development of special principles. In accordance with the “scientific character” principle, educational information in its content corresponds to the achievement of modern computer science on the level defined by the state educational standards. The realization of “system” principle is achieved more fully under conditions of information and special disciplines integration than used to be in the traditional system. The rocketing amount of scientific information, development of computer technology causes a problem of the students’ ability to percept it and transform into person knowledge. Professional-oriented information environment helps to develop system thinking and ability to sort out the most important points and secondary and to extract and analyze the knowledge independently.

The realization of personality-oriented  approach  and organization of  independent work in the process of education  contributes to taking considerations of  various levels of students awareness in the sphere of computer usage.

Principle of consciousness is characterized by independent thinking and depends largely on the students attitude to learning. The wide application of computer technology in educational process and formation of information method of professional activity is the key motivation factor of students cognitive activity. As basic incentives we can single out the following: the involvement of computer technology in lecturing courses, references to additional electronic materials, the presence of practical task oriented for computer application, the usage of modeling programs, work in the Internet for the research projects, the availability of electronic materials and testing programs for knowledge control.

Besides the realization of overall didactic principles of education, we can also single out some of specific principles, they are: the principle of key positions, the principle of directed development, the principle of synergism, the principle of inheritance and polymorphism.  According to the principle of key positions, information today is the “key” to solving of many problems in the sphere of education. For instance, the problems of access to local and international resources can be eliminated if students and professors have possibility to appeal to them through internet or to use the electronic variant of edition, if there is a wide use of  electronic methodological complexes etc.

In recent times we can observe the tendency of the reduction of the in-class work and the movement of the emphasis on the independent work of students. It is obvious that the key here is the computer technology. Thus, the information is the ground on which all further educational projects can be built.

The principle of directed development presupposes that modernization  of educational content doesn’t contradict to  the traditional approach to education, but exist alongside with  on the basis of mutual addition and enrichment and is a strategy which is the vector of development direction.

The principle of synergism means  the increase of efficiency result, that is the application of computer technology by students with the help of interrelations of various types of activities.

The principle of inheritance and polymorphism have come from the programming into the educational structure.  In object-oriented methodology the notion of object is introduced as the unity of all properties and activities.

The interrelations between the objects are based on two principles: inheritance (object – descendant repeats the structure and behavior of object-parent) and polymorphism (the ability of different objects  to perform the same action differently). With such approach to object notion, in the hierarchical structure the relations between the objects, their interdependence  become more vivid. Building up such hierarchical structure which presents  the scheme of interdisciplinary links and courses allows to structure educational material more efficiently  and to give possibility to professor to form various discipline structures as well as to choose different methods of teaching.

 

 

References

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