The article clarifies the concept of “virtual information educational environment” (VIEE) and examines the researchers' views on its meaning exposed in the scientific literature. The article determines the didactic potential of the virtual information educational environment for the geography students training based on the analysis of the authors' experience of blended learning by means of the Google Classroom. It also specifies the features (immersion, interactivity, and dynamism, sense of presence, continuity, and causality). The authors highlighted the advantages of virtual information educational environment implementation, such as: increase of the efficiency of the educational process by intensifying the process of cognition and interpersonal interactive communication; continuous access to multimedia content both in Google Classroom and beyond; saving student time due to the absence of necessity to work out the training material “manually”; availability of virtual pages of the virtual class; individualization of the educational process; formation of informational culture of the geography students; and more productive learning of the educational material at the expense of IT educational facilities. Among the disadvantages the article mentions low level of computerization, insignificant quantity and low quality of software products, underestimation of the role of VIЕЕ in the professional training of geography students, and the lack of economic stimuli, etc.
The Ukrainian educational policy aims at training a competitive professional who can
work effectively and efficiently in the context of rapidly changing information society.
Nowadays its focus is on the transition to a virtual model of education. The geography
students are required to be fluent in navigating the global information space, be able to
analyze large volumes of information, be capable of life-long education [
However, some inconsistencies prevent the process of modernization of teacher training going smoothly. Among them, we can highlight the contradiction between contemporary social requirements and the actual preparedness of geography students to study in a virtual information educational environment (VIEE); the incompatibility of the didactic potential of information educational environment and the lack of systematic outlook on its implementation in professional teacher training. 1.2
The analysis of scientific literature confirms the relevance of the problem under study.
Thus, Mykola I. Murashko and Svitlana O. Nazarko [
Some aspects of our chosen theme are considered in the studies devoted to distance
education and blended learning (Myroslav I. Zhaldak [37], Volodymyr M. Kukharenko
[
The geography study by means of the virtual educational environment and blended
learning, we ground our research on, is widely presented in foreign publications.
Vertual reality as an efficient way in GIS classroom teaching is studied by Jiangfan
Feng [
Currently the topicality of implementation of VIEE and its didactic potential for geography student training are not fully recognized in the Ukrainian scientific writings. Now there are some electronic information resources such as Google Earth, LearningApps.org, World Map Quiz, Redigo, etc. that are mostly used to study geography than to train geography students [13; 14]. In addition, some elements of the virtual educational environment, for example: e-mail, chats, forums, blogs, computer multimedia programs, electronic manuals, simulators, media resources, etc., are applied in distance and full-time studies, but due to the lack of a scientific and methodological basis, the results achieved have a fragmentary unsystematic character. 1.3
The objective of the article is to specify the concept definition of “virtual information educational environment” and to summarize the researchers’ understanding of it, and to consider its didactic potential for the training of geography students. 2
The gradual transition of education from the knowledge to the virtual pattern reflects the process of its rapid informatization and boosts the introduction of some new terms into the scientific discourse. The comparative analysis of the meaning of the newly coined terms such as “virtual educational environment”, “virtual learning environment”, “information educational environment”, etc., is presented in the following research (Table 1). the organized system of informational, technological, didactic resources, various forms of computer and telecommunication interaction used by educators and students a software system designed to support distance learning with an emphasis on learning, in contrast to a managed learning environment, with the emphasis on the management of the learning process a system for the learning process management created for
Term Virtual learning environment / Virtual reality learning environment Information educational environment Information learning environment Learning information environment Cloud-based learning environment E-space / E-learning environment
Researchers
Falshtynska [
Obdalova [
Panchenko [
Belysheva [
Lytvynova [
Leshchuk [
Lytvynova [
Kesby [
Definition
students’ learning activities, and provides the necessary
replenishment and resources for successful learning and
knowledge acquisition
is the simulation of teaching method, thinking model,
cognition manner and control means in the actual learning
environment
the conditions for information exchange, which are
provided with the special software, aimed at satisfying the
educational needs of users, usually created by
cooperatively interconnected educational institutions with
information exchange
open, nonlinear, holistic system of innovation orientation
the system that reflects the interconnection of conditions
and has such features as: the availability of information
resources, the interactive nature of communication
environment, saturation with educational resources, the
possibility to change goals, methods, forms of learning
organization, asynchronous use, the ability to store and
accumulate information
an open system accumulating in itself deliberately created
organizational-pedagogical, procedural-technological,
informational resources, and with a single value-purpose
basis provides innovation as a means and mechanism for
the formation of components of the pedagogical culture,
the formation of the professional position of teachers and
the content of the forms, methods and techniques,
technologies, aimed at forming a pedagogical culture of
students – future teachers
a system of information communication and traditional
means aimed at organizing and conducting a learning
process focused on personal learning in the information
society
an artificially constructed system that provides learning
mobility, group collaboration between teachers and
students and uses cloud technologies for effective and safe
achievement of didactic goals
Online course materials used to support traditional campus
based learning that are delivered entirely online, or
provide complementary support in the form of learning
materials. There are four main types of e-learning:
websupplemented, web-dependant, mixed mode, fully online.
a concept of a virtual world that was referenced to the real
world, which had five types of space, namely Internet
space, data space, 3D graphical space, personal perceptual
and cognitive space, and social space.
Table 1 shows that the environment is sometimes interpreted as “information
exchange”, “information space”. Although, most of the definitions are made in the
domain of the system approach, according to which the environment is a system of
interconnected, interdependent components that form a single entity performing
qualitatively new function, not inherent in its separate elements. This means that the
environment under study “is formed rather by educational subjects, than by technical
means or electronic guides, therefore its existence is impossible beyond the
communication of students, faculty, facilitators, administrators, developers of distance
courses, etc.” [
Let us consider to use the term “virtual information educational environment” in the context of geography student training.
In such an environment, the nature of the interaction of all participants of learning (a student, a student group, a teacher) is fundamentally changing. We deliberately do not use the term “study” for we interpret it as a cognitive activity of students who under the guidance of a teacher master knowledge, skills, and develop cognitive abilities. The involvement of the geography students in the information educational environment means that a teacher changes his role of a head and mentor to a tutor, facilitator, and moderator. Teacher strives to help a student find an individual educational route (an individual way of personal potential realization as a student that is made taking into account his abilities, interests, needs, motivation, opportunities and experience).
Geography, socio-economic geography in particular, is a discipline with dynamic content. So the knowledge received by former student at the higher school in the past can become “out of date for one day” in relation to the present one. That is why it is of great importance to teach a student to collect and analyze the necessary information by his/her own using available statistical sources such as countrymeters.info, ukrstat.gov.ua; to process the records and statistics of international organizations such as UN, WHO, etc.; to use information in the form of self-created cartographic works, schemes, drawings based on DataGraf, QuickMap, and Google Earth; to work with interactive maps such as MigrationsMap, kartograph.org, Setera.org, World Map Quiz, Redigo, Mapillary, etc.
Modern students live in a media environment where the use of computers, Internet
resources and mobile devices is the part of their everyday life. They are, according to
Aleksander Kuleshov “digitally born”, and this fact cannot be ignored. Therefore, “key
properties” [
Moreover, global informatization of society has caused the problem of cognitive
overload (when the number of operations that human brain must perform exceeds its
capacity) [
As the scientific works do not share the commonly accepted definition of the term
“virtual information educational environment”, there is an urgent need to define our
own one taking into account the definitions given by other authors, and the specifics of
teacher work and the requirements for the personality of the geography teacher. Basing
on the researches of Maryna O. Skurativska and Serhii S. Popadiuk [
Any platforms as commercial as free suitable for blended learning such as Blackboard, Bodington, CloudSchool, Edmodo, Google Classroom, Moodle, etc. can serve as the basis for creating a virtual information educational environment.
The authors of this article have the experience in scaffolding of blended learning of geography students by using Google Classroom [4; 5; 7], Fig. 1.
It should be noted that the educational process organized in the VIEE, based on the
Google Classroom, is similar in its structure to the traditional one and embraces the
objective-motivational, content-operational, emotional-volitional,
evaluativeproductive components. Although, all of them are fulfilled with the specific
technologies and tools (IT communication tools and IT educational facilities).
1. To summarize the stated above we may claim the advantages of VIEE:
─ increase of the efficiency of the educational process by intensifying the process of
cognition and interpersonal interactive communication [23; 34];
─ continuous access to multimedia content both in Google Classroom and beyond;
─ saving student time due to the absence of necessity to work out the training material
“manually”;
─ availability of virtual pages of the virtual class;
─ individualization of the educational process;
─ formation of informational culture of the geography students;
─ more productive learning of the educational material at the expense of IT educational
facilities.
2. On the basis of the analysis of scientific literature (Olena M. Arkhipova [