=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2770/paper14
|storemode=property
|title=Factors and Didactic Characteristics that Determine the Information and Educational Environment of the University
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2770/paper14.pdf
|volume=Vol-2770
|authors=Natalia Brovka,Dmitry Medvedev
}}
==Factors and Didactic Characteristics that Determine the Information and Educational Environment of the University==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2770/paper14.pdf
Factors and Didactic Characteristics that Determine the
Information and Educational Environment of the
University
Natalia Brovka1[0000-0002-8106-4318] and Dmitry Medvedev1[0000-0003-4758-5846]
1
Belarusian State University, Nezavisimosti-4, 220030 Minsk, Belarus
n_br@mail.ru, medvedev@bsu.by
Abstract. The development of Informatization and the need to ensure the quali-
ty of education determine the relevance of research on the information and edu-
cational environment of the University. A departure from formalism in under-
standing the goals and objectives of education is possible only based on a com-
bination of a set of paradigms. The environmental approach, combined with the
system approach, is aimed at organizing such connections and relationships in
the educational system that will contribute to improving the efficiency of its
functioning. Activity-based, personality-oriented and competence-based ap-
proaches are the basis for the modernization of the educational environment in
which the updating of the content, forms, and methods of communication and
training is focused on the developing nature of modern higher education under
the axiological approach. The information and educational environment for
University students is a teleonomic open pedagogical system. The didactic
characteristics of this environment, which are caused by the need to correlate
external and internal assessments of the quality of education, include
Informatization, intersubject, connectivity, heterogeneity, flexibility and man-
ageability, and productivity of interaction between the components of the envi-
ronment. The methodological system of training as the core of the information
and educational environment, functions, is adjusted and developed under the
macro- and micro-goals of training specialists in higher education. Under the
methodological system of training students of engineering specialties in the
subject of information educational environment of the University is understood
as a set of components, leading of which are the subjects of teaching and learn-
ing, whose interaction is determined by the order covers didactic principles,
contents, forms, methods of teaching, training and methodological support of
educational process and enhances the effectiveness of training in the University.
These didactic characteristics of the information and educational environment
determine the emergence and expediency of the methodological system of
teaching mechanics students.
Keywords: polyparadigm approach, quality and effectiveness of training, in-
formation and educational environment of the University, didactic characteris-
tics, the methodological system of teaching.
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0
International (CC BY 4.0).
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Informatization of Education and E-learning Methodology:
Digital Technologies in Education (IEELM-DTE 2020), Krasnoyarsk, Russia, October 6-9, 2020.
1 Introduction
Trends in the development of modern society determine the new challenges facing
modern higher education. Among them is the integration of in-depth professional
training with socio-cultural adaptation programs, the task of developing students'
skills not only ineffectively solve professional problems but also to assess the role and
significance of new ideas for the development of science and professional innova-
tions. The changes in the development of science and its methodology are also re-
flected in higher education. It is especially true in the last decade, as the higher educa-
tion system has become aware of the disparity between the increasing volume of sci-
entific knowledge, requirements for the competencies of University graduates, and
their training. To eliminate this disparity, we need new conditions and learning envi-
ronments that involve purposeful, scientifically based implementation of the interrela-
tionships of social, material, didactic, and communication conditions that increase the
productivity of teaching and learning processes. In the context of the priority of the
knowledge economy and Informatization, one of the tasks of training at the classical
University is to increase the effectiveness of students' self-development skills, inde-
pendent educational, cognitive, and research activities, and the ability to use infor-
mation computer technologies in the process of applying fundamental knowledge to
solving professionally-oriented tasks [1]. The concept of quality education is becom-
ing more diverse. It is connected with consideration such problems as the socio-
economic request for experts with particular qualifications and requirements of the
labor market, society, and academic community [2], developed didactically-based
scenarios assessment of personal achievements of the students [3], equipment of edu-
cational process of modern computer and technological equipment and the experience
of its use in the educational process [4, 5].
It is necessary to pay attention to the difference between such concepts as «quality
of education» and efficiency that are at first glance similar but essentially different.
The difference between efficiency and other quality measures is detected in a triad
outcome – costs (resources) – goals space. In the education system to the category of
the result can be an expert, personality, quality of education, etc. The effectiveness of
the learning process does not always make sense to determine based on the study of
the achievability of the desired result concerning the minimum cost. It is more appro-
priate to consider the achievement of the expected outcome t with the allowable ex-
penses: you can give a lecture on mathematics to 400-500 students at once, but how
effective will its assimilation be? As a rule in an educational institution intermediate
results of the educational process are recorded in the form of changes in the
knowledge (cognitive-conceptual), operational (skills), and motivational-value
spheres of the student's activity. These changes are detected using qualimetric moni-
toring, and the concept of the final result changes depending on the level of manage-
ment, the scale of consideration of a particular system, the stage or level of its study.
Naturally, the criterion of effectiveness as the outcome of the educational process
changes over time. It depends upon the level of scale of the systems and processes
under consideration, on the goals and tasks dictated by the social order.
The tasks of higher education in Belarus and the goals of the Belarusian State Uni-
versity correlate with the modern model of science development. The post-non-
classical period of natural science is characterized by value orientations due to the"
human-dimensional " nature of the study of self-developing systems as well as the
integration of science, education, and production.
2 The Polyparadigm approach as the base of creation and
functioning of the information and educational environment
The study of the educational environment due to its complexity, non-linearity of
changes, and multi-vector of development require a revision of the research method-
ology 6]. Avoiding formalism in understanding the goals and objectives of education,
creating conditions for the formation of the educational environment is possible only
based on a combination of the main provisions of a set of paradigms – the
Polyparadigm approach [7, 8].
The environmental approach allows us to move away from science-centrism in un-
derstanding the goals and objectives of education to the strategy of forming not only a
didactic triad – professional knowledge, skills, and abilities, but also the experience of
reflexive attitude to them and their transformation taking into account internal and
socio-cultural requirements. Besides, orientation to the learning environment allows
you to shift the focus in the teacher's activities from active pedagogical influence on
the student's personality to the area of formation of the learning environment in which
his training, self-learning, and self-development take place. The environmental and
system approach are focused on the development of communications in education.
The organization of such connections and relationships in the educational environ-
ment will contribute to improving the effectiveness of its functioning. The implemen-
tation of the system and environmental approaches are in the explore the socio-
economic requirements, tendencies of development of education and science. There is
the basis for establishing the factors and instructional characteristics that determine
the nature and specificity of modern information and educational environment of the
University as well as the relevant properties of the methodological system of training
students for the improvement of learning efficiency.
Activity-based and competence-based approaches serve as the basis for building a
system of goal-setting and goal-achievement of macro-and micro-goals of training,
education, and development of students, and developing ways to manifest the selected
properties of the methodological system in its components (goals, content, methods,
forms, and means of training). Development and modernization of the subject and
educational and methodological support of the educational environment in which
updating the content, ways of combining forms and methods of communication and
training are focused on the developing nature of modern higher education, and are
implemented based on personality-oriented, interdisciplinary and axiological ap-
proaches.
The polyparadigm approach as a methodological basis for higher school didactics
allows us to take into account the openness and non-linear nature of the educational
system's functioning since it is expressed in taking into account the prognostic and
managerial aspects of its development. This involves the correlation of external and
internal factors, the establishment of properties, principles, and didactic provisions of
the organization of students' education in the context of the orientation of the subjects
of the educational process to interaction and co-creation.
From the system analysis point of view, a system is a set of structurally interrelated
and functionally interdependent elements. The system approach serves as a methodo-
logical basis and is the basis for solving real problems if its use provides for the com-
plex application of deductive and inductive research methods [9]. The deductive
method is necessary to determine which path of development of the situation may
have or already has a place in the analyzed process and is expressed in establishing
the characteristics of the system due to external factors such as the level of socio-
economic development and society's needs, leading conceptual approaches to the
development of education, the level of development of science, etc. The inductive
method is necessary for the selection of relevant, appropriate technologies, methods,
and forms of education that allow you to get the desired result – improving the effi-
ciency of training students – most likely [8].
The large-scale development of computer technologies, for example, has not
spared all sections of theoretical and applied mechanics. Almost all methods, compu-
tational methods, and approaches to teaching mechanics today require and are focused
on their computer implementation and use based on updating the intersubject relations
of computer science, mathematics and mechanics as a tool for integrating the funda-
mental and professionally-oriented components of the educational process. At the
same time, the processes of Informatization and computerization in the modern in-
formation learning environment add new opportunities and advantages to it. Processes
that were previously only the subject of mechanics are now studied within the frame-
work of intersubject interactions of both natural science and the Humanities.
In this regard, the evolutionary paradigm of natural science development becomes
an important methodological basis for research in the theory and teaching methods of
mechanics students: knowledge of objects of modern mechanics not only requires
traditional skills of analysis, problematization, identification of cause-and-effect rela-
tionships and the essence of processes but also requires the development of the expe-
rience of a value attitude to the world and is associated with humanistic ideas of per-
sonal development and self-development [10].
3 Factors and characteristics that determine the information
and educational environment for students at the University
The mechanism to achieve a higher education is productive only if the components of
information educational environment and learning system can dynamically adjust, as
reacting to external factors, and such «internal» conditions, such as level of motiva-
tion and the initial academic training, logistical and methodological support of educa-
tional process, professional and scientific level of the cadre. With all the originality,
uniqueness, and multiplicity of pedagogical systems, they are subject to the general
law of the organizational structure and functioning of the system as a process. At the
same time, we can talk about the quality of education (the quality of a specialist) as a
result of the functioning of the pedagogical system, we can only speak if its design
and monitoring of effectiveness are based on the fact that the goals, functions, and
means of achieving these goals are determined by the convergence of external and
internal factors. From this position, we should consider the information and educa-
tional environment of students' learning.
Thus, the information and educational environment of student's training is a
teleonomic, open construct, which is determined by a set of the following factors that
are significant for the subjects of the educational process:
- content sources for the formation of academic, professional, meta-subject, and
socio-personal competencies, which involve the purposeful actualization of
intersubject relations between fundamental, and professionally-oriented disciplines;
- procedural possibilities for implementing the personality-oriented nature of pro-
fessional and educational training based on a combination of subject-subject and sub-
ject-object active and interactive interaction;
- external (socio-economic, cultural, etc.) and internal influences and incentives for
educational, cognitive, communicative, and research activity of students;
- conditions for students to gain experience of value-semantic attitude to educa-
tional, research, and professionally-oriented activities.
The fruitfulness of such an environment is ensured by the fact that the components
of this environment meet the following didactic characteristics: informatization, con-
nectivity, heterogeneity, flexibility and manageability, the productivity of interaction
of the components of the environment [8].
The term «informatization» means the speed of searching for any data; the availa-
bility of materials and their prompt use for educational, research purposes, and in the
preparation of publications; the ability to independently prepare and study educational
materials; performing calculations with the function of modifying the conditions of
the problem by replacing any parameter; ensuring the choice of educational trajectory,
individual pace and time of mastering the material; building an open learning system
that involves the integrated use and flexible variation of methods, forms, and means
of learning. All of them, along with the opportunities to reduce the cost of research,
project development, and training, as well as the transition from a disciplinary to a
system model of education, constitute the advantages of the information and educa-
tional environment of a modern University.
Informatization and interdisciplinarity are expressed in the systematic actualization
of the relationship between the content of teaching theoretical mechanics, continuum
mechanics, and the tasks determined by the specifics of the future professional activi-
ty of students with the main provisions of fundamental mathematical Sciences and the
use of computer technologies. Of particular importance are the applied aspects of
vector geometry, algebra, differential, and integral calculus, which, subject to the
integration of natural science knowledge, open up the possibility of expanding the
range of physical effects studied.
Interdisciplinarity becomes one of the most important characteristics of the infor-
mation and educational environment, since it is a pedagogical category that reflects
real processes, denotes the connections between objects studied by the Sciences, is
reflected not only in the content but also in the forms and methods of organizing the
learning process and contributes to the comprehensive implementation of educational,
developmental and educational functions, acting as a tool for implementing the inte-
gration of theory and practice of learning [11].
In particular, a significant role in the organization of relationships between profes-
sionally-oriented and fundamental components of the educational process is played by
intersubject links of the course «Theoretical mechanics»(as a basic course for training
mechanics) and such educational disciplines as «Resistance of materials», «Robot
Mechanics», «Biomechanics», «Computer mechanics».
In the activity aspect, it is especially important to develop students' skills to build
and study mechanical and mathematical models of real processes. This implies not
only a sufficient degree of mastery of the mathematical apparatus and methods of
building models but also a certain level of independence in solving modeling prob-
lems.
At the same time, due to such individual differences as different levels of profi-
ciency in mathematics, different rates of perception and assimilation of knowledge,
the educational environment should provide opportunities to build individual educa-
tional trajectories for students. This implies following the principle of expediency and
selectivity of using the capabilities of computer technologies per such didactic charac-
teristics as connectivity, heterogeneity, flexibility, and manageability in the organiza-
tion of the environment. Heterogeneity of the environment implies a variety of tools
(organizational, subject, scientific and methodological, research, etc.) that it has.
Connectivity, flexibility, and manageability are expressed on the one hand in provid-
ing subjects of the educational process with the choice of trajectories for the imple-
mentation of training on the other ‒ consist in the orientation of all components of the
environment to improve its efficiency.
It is necessary to consider that the introduction of any innovations and advances in
scientific progress in the educational environment often leads to conflict, and there-
fore requires a special management effort involving flexibility (variability) and effi-
ciency of interaction of the various components that define an environment. Follow-
ing the provisions of management theory, unproductive, undesirable ways to resolve
the conflict between innovation and tradition include expansion (innovation destroys
tradition), annihilation (mutual destruction of tradition and innovation), inconsistency
or duplication (as a synonym for infertility or the fact that innovation practically does
not affect the effectiveness of the result). The large-scale development of computer
technologies, for example, has not spared all sections of theoretical and applied me-
chanics. Almost all methods, computational methods, and approaches to teaching
mechanics today require and are focused on their computer implementation and use
based on the actualization of intersubject relations of computer science, mathematics,
and mechanics as a tool for integrating fundamental and professionally-oriented com-
ponents of the educational process. At the same time, the processes of Informatization
and computerization in the modern information environment of learning add new
opportunities and advantages to it.
4 Conclusions
Information and educational environment (IEE) of the University is a specially orga-
nized educational system of a teleonomic nature, aimed at students' acquisition of
certain knowledge, skills, and experience of an emotional and value attitude to learn-
ing and self-development, as components of academic, professional, and socio-
personal competencies within a particular specialty and in a particular educational
institution.
The above-mentioned methodological grounds for improving the effectiveness of
training mechanics students, as well as factors and didactic characteristics of the in-
formation and educational environment of the University cause the following proper-
ties of the methodical system as a tool to enhance student learning: the consistency of
innovative and traditional approaches to organization of educational process; the con-
tingency of aims, content, forms, methods and means of education from the stand-
point of improving its effectiveness; the focus effect on indicators such as "infor-
mation enrichment", developmental nature of learning content; focus on creation of
conditions for development of activity of subjects of study, their learning and self-
development; personal-oriented nature of training by enabling students to build their
own trajectories and select computer-based learning tools in accordance with the ef-
fectiveness criteria: the ratio of software cost/task completion time/ quality of the
resulting solution.
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