CLAIM – научно-образовательный кластер

A.Yu. Philippovich,
Ass. Professor of the Bauman MSTU Chair
“Information Processing and Control Systems”

Situation Centre for Monitoring and Coordinating the Processes of Russian Engineering Education Integration into the World Educational Space

Abstract

The basic purpose of creation of such Centre is to increase efficiency of the integration processes management at the expense of new information technologies. It is necessary to realize the following possibilities of Situational centre for solution of actual problems and tasks of integration: monitoring (observe) and control the students’ masses mobility in country; centralisation and processing of all information necessary for calculating credit matrixes of regions, universities, faculties and etc; storage accumulation credits of students and other citizens; supporting a balance between different educational systems in Europe, Asia, Pacific and Russia.

A whole series of attempts is made nowadays in Russia directed towards the native educational system integration into the world educational space. The priority line in this area is Russia’s joining the Bologna process (incorporation into the European educational space) demanding the solution of such essential problems as creation of the national credit system, providing the mobility of students and teaching staff, coordination of educational programs and degree certificates.

At the Bauman MSTU, with the support of its educational-methodical commission on the speciality “Information Technologies in Education” the research work is carried out; the work is channelled into the arising situations analysis, elaboration of efficient approaches to the application of new educational technologies in the domestic engineering school.

The work done allowed to reveal several main problems and tasks demanding powerful analytic systems in order to make out with these tasks:

Students’ mobility. In Europe (on the whole territory of the EC) the students’ mobility involves annually 750 thousand people. Today, this number is already 3-4 times as much as overall strength of the Italian army, and it increases constantly due to the entry of the new East-European countries, irregularity of the production facilities distribution, reduction of the average tuition fees, and many other factors.

Opening of the students’ mobility purview in Russia will lead to the necessity of monitoring and managing the travelling of many hundred thousand foreign and home representatives of the “students’ army” equipped not only with “intellectual arms” but also with modern information technologies.

On the East of our country where educational and intellectual resources are weakened by mass emigration and assimilation of the representatives of Asian and Pacific-Ocean regions, the students’ mobility problem demands special approaches.

European and Eastern educational spaces. European educational space being formed within the framework of the Bologna process opposes itself in a competitive activity to the American and developing Eastern educational spaces. In spite of the Bologna process current priority, the development of interaction with the UMAP (University Mobility in Asia and Pacific Region) is no less important.

At solving the controlled mobility problems, just the Asian region can become the main “donor” for the development of educational services in the Russia’s eastern parts. Besides, a high concentration of the industrial facilities in the Asian region, and an active cooperation would allow to preserve and develop (in contrast to Europe where a reverse tendency may be observed) the scientific and technological components of home industry and engineering education.

Maintenance of the balance between European and Eastern educational spaces, modelling and prognostication of the advanced situations, are the most important tasks.

Coordination of the credit values. In order to provide the student mobility within the framework of the Bologna process, the UMAP organisation, and the US universities, the credit assessment systems ECTS (Europe Credit Transfer System\Scheme), UCTS (UMAP Credit Transfer System\Scheme), USCS (US Credit System) are used, correspondingly. The credit value (credit weight, capacity) of the science branch shows its laboriousness and study depth.

As a rule, the credit weights of the subjects are coordinated within the framework of only one speciality (or a field of study) of the specific higher school (faculty). Such local evaluation can turn out inefficient.

For example, the study of “Theory of formal languages” (TFL) subject in the linguistic university can entail greater labour upon the students than in the technical higher school having the amplifying mathematical training. As a result, the number of credits given for the TFL will be in the linguistic school more than in the technical one.

To coordinate the credit values of the subjects on the whole territory of the Russian educational space, is possible only in the centralised way. Initial estimation of the basic credit weights on the level of State Educational Standards (SES) is capable of serving as an efficient procedure solving this problem, and certain factors changing the basic value are assigned to each region, higher school, faculty, speciality, even to each member of the professorial staff.

The whole of factors can be presented as one-dimensional or many-dimensional “credit matrix”. See below an example of two-dimensional credit matrix of specialities for a specific higher school.

Tabular presentation of two-dimensional credit matrix

Industrial orders to train specialists. The credit system can be used as a practice to form and indirectly represent the needs of the production and service spheres. To do so, it is advisable to perform the monitoring and to reveal the needs in specialists, their job descriptions, to modify the credit matrix factors (coefficients).

It is necessary, for example, to satisfy the wants in the IT-specialists in Dubna-city, and to increase the priority of respective engineering specialities. For that, the matrices of needed specialities and subjects in the indicated region are changed by increasing the local coefficients.

It is impossible, of course, to solve the problem of relocation of students and teachers (for example, from Novosibirsk to Dubna) by means of solely this practice but other things being equal this approach can become effective.

While transferring to the credit-module educational system, a dynamic alteration of the credit matrices and modelling the consequences of these changes may be demanded. An active revelation of the new needs, and due response require the use of productive electronic computer complexes.

Accumulative credits. In connection with development of the continued study concept (Long Life Learning), transfer to the module training techniques and chargeable studies, the use of Credit Accumulation System becomes actual. Accumulation systems including USCS and ECA (Europe Credit Accumulation) allow to form for each person the credit-profile “passports” reflecting the knowledge acquired, skills, abilities, and competence.

In order to provide centralised storage and updating (by analogy with the Unified State Examination results) as well as to analyse the existing credit-profile “passports” of the engineering personnel and the most demanded disciplines, it is necessary to create the specialised Warehouses and analytical systems.

Other tasks. Besides the main tasks, there is a diversity of additional tasks needed to be solved by means of modern automation procedures: transfer to two APL and APEL accreditation forms, supervision or performing the specific duties of accrediting agencies, arrangement of conditions for reducing the manpower drain, monitoring the foreign educational programmes, comparing them with the domestic ones, supporting the balance between prevalent domestic engineering school and novel educational technologies.

Situation Centre for Monitoring and Coordinating the Processes of Russian Engineering Education Integration into the World Educational Space. The specialised program-technical complexes applied to the class of situation centres (SC) have to be established for the purpose of nationwide monitoring and management of the credit system as well as the development of other educational systems. They must be equipped by powerful geo-information, expert, simulating systems and special situation analysis of the educational processes systems (Fig.1).

Fig. 1. Diagram of the SC aggregate structure

The SC key goals are the monitoring of all necessary data, analysis of the existing situation, and modelling the consequences of the decisions made.

The methods of the SC separate components interaction are at present already worked out and approved [1, 2], the portal of engineering education (http://www.techno.edu.ru) is actively developing; the educational approaches are elaborated [3] as well as specific educational programmes for certificated specialists to work in the SC [4]; the situation models of educational processes and common interfaces for interaction with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system “University” for higher school, are under development.

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