This paper presents the results of a theoretical analysis of student-centered learning aimed at educational outcomes and the realization of the student's personality-oriented potential. In addition, practical approaches to the design of an individual educational trajectory are highlighted and its application for first year students at undergraduate level is exemplified. Student-centered learning approach is one of the key trends in the development of education in today's world. However, modern scientific views on this method are rather contradictory, which makes it necessary to systematize data on the emergence of studentcentered learning models in education and analyze the results of the introduction of individual educational trajectories.
process-based approach (organizational work, aimed at the interaction between the student and the administration of the educational institution).
If the aforementioned trajectory and path both have preset directions to guide the student, the
professional education track provides students with the freedom to choose their desired career and
structure their education accordingly without career counseling. It allows for the ability to make
conscious choices and facilitates full student involvement in the process of "self-learning" (in the
narrow sense - as self-study) and "self-creation" (in the broad sense - as "self-invention"). In this
context, it is proposed to introduce a new concept - "educational project". [
The educational project solves more complex tasks and functions of the IET as a system of independent choices, involving independent navigation (and not career counseling).
The main problem of using IET in educational activities is expressed in the following contradiction: IET is a student-centered learning service (hence, a multivariate system), but at the same time it is limited by a set of educational resources available in the electronic information and educational environment of the university. To allow the students to pursue their goals, the IET is built by the student individually, but in order to create an educational service within the electronic information and educational environment of the university, a limited set of content elements of the IET are used, the competence profile of the student, the dynamics of movement along the IET with a mentor, and the dynamics of movement along the IET independently.
In modern education, depending on the techniques and teaching methods used, there are four forms of student-centered learning (personalization of learning): 1) the expansion the student's autonomy (used in large introductory courses); 2) self-learning (students determine educational tasks, content, didactic tools themselves); 3) differentiated teaching (students are divided into groups for further mastering of the educational program); 4) adaptive learning (personalization of learning).
Depending on the objectives of the educational organization and the goals of the student, the IET
distinguishes two areas:
personalization of the program, when the teaching process is adapted to a specific student;
personalization by the students themselves, when the students independently build their own
education [
The ultimate form of student-centered learning is individualization, which views the student as the
end user of education and adapts mass education to the needs of a particular user. For all levels of
education, including corporate , “customization” is the modification of the educational program to meet
the specific needs of each student [
Student-centered learning education is customized for a specific student, depending on his or her personal interests, role in the team or level of training. Specialized educational programs are based on a targeted selection of specific content, examples, and structures to meet the needs and specific goals of a small number of students.
Examples of customizing education include: Facilitation
This practice involves group and individual support from tutors, mentors, and internship supervisors for solving educational problems at various levels; Boxed solutions
This method is practically devoid of customization. It includes various thematic games, open programs, and online courses (MOOC) and can be used to teach the largest possible number of students.
It is important to note that student-centered learning education programs draw on local capabilities and create unique solutions within the adaptive educational programs that take into account the IET. Such educational solutions take into account the level of subject expertise, range of interests, and educational tempo, personal, behavioral and physiological characteristics of the student. Comprehensive customization within student-centered learning improves the learning experience through various IET “settings” and adjustable teaching formats tailored to the preferences of a particular student.
Consider several examples of organizing student-centered learning using IET in various foreign universities presented in Table 1.
SMU-X Pioneering Pedagogy is based on interdisciplinary content, project-based learning, collaborative real-world problem solving with partners, and active student mentoring from faculty and industry partners. These educational directions are packaged in the IET of students.
Platforms used: Echo 360, Active Learning Platform (ALP), eLearn, and WebEx.
with an orientation semester, where all students are introduced to the learning concept, three undergraduate study programs, and the Science, Technology and Society program, which enables students to develop scientific thinking and critical judgment skills, while a series of Interpersonal Skills Workshops helps students work in a team, show leadership and communication skills.
The first university in Russia to provide opportunities for professional development by creating individual educational trajectories and tracking digital footprints.
The university is a pioneer of a new network principle of education in Russia, in which educational trajectories for each student are selected personally. University 2035's various services provide customized content to enable students to study both offline and online through a digital platform <https://2035.university/>
In general, most of the universities around the globe consider student-centered learning as a natural
and mandatory part of the educational process. Universities strategize and plan their programs based
on the independence and awareness of their students. Previous academic restrictions are being replaced
with the most open environment. For instance, in Germany even the constitution has provisions on
education that are consistent with the concept of IET [
We analyzed a series of case studies on the use of the IET in education and present what we found to be the advantages and disadvantages of the system in Table 2.
Undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students self-select courses that make up the core curriculum, their major, minor, and electives. Each course is assigned a number of credits, which are determined by the university and may vary in different countries, universities, and specialties. The number of credits a student receives for the course is determined by several criteria, such as workload, learning outcomes, and hours spent in attendance for the course. The number of hours a student spends attending lectures and seminars, individual tutoring, and exams will factor into the number of credits awarded for the course. Students can earn credits for various types of study activities (modules, courses, internships, project work thesis work, etc.) that are required for the successful completion of their education. Table 3 shows examples of the implementation of the credit system, which is the basis for building the IET of students at foreign universities. The credit hours (units) for each subject indicate the total amount of time spent in the classroom and laboratory, and the approximate time the average student spends in outside preparation per semester. Each unit is about 14 hours of work per semester or about one hour of work per week for a subject studied for the entire semester. The total score for one subject is obtained by adding all the units. Three MIT units are roughly equal to one "semester hour" or credit. An MIT subject with 12 units translates to four semester hours or credits.
120 credit hours per semester, but no more than 144 semester credit hours. To graduate, a student must take at least 42 semester credit hours in upper-level courses.
must complete a 3 step process. First, the student accumulates 120 CATS points at FHEQ level 4, thus, earning a Certificate, then 120 CATS points at FHEQ level 4, equivalent to a Diploma, and finally, 120 CATS points at level 6 FHEQ for the Advanced Diploma. Postgraduate certificates are taught at 7 FHEQ level and have 60 credit points. Postgraduate diploma is accredited with 120 credit points and is taught at level 7 FHEQ. Masters degrees are awarded with 180 CATS points. Undergraduate students must complete a minimum of 130 credits, including 36 credits or more in general education courses, 39 credits or more in their major, and fulfill all the specific requirements of their faculty / college. Students with a dual major, minor, or a combined major course must earn an additional 22 credits from permitted courses.
FU-BEST awards ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) credits. ECTS is based on the principle that the workload of a full-time student within one academic year is equivalent to 60 credits, which includes contact hours in the classroom, individual assignments and preparation for classes. The average workload for fulltime students in Europe ranges from 1,500 to 1,800 hours per year; one ECTS credit is 25 to 30 hours of work. The Academic Senate of the Free University of Berlin has established that one ECTS credit is equivalent to 30 hours of study.
The scope of the degree is measured in (ECTS) credits. The courses provide credits according to the required workload. One credit represents approximately 27 hours of work.
The degrees are designed so that students receive around 60 credits within one academic year or 1,600 full-time hours. The first-cycle degree is 180 credits, the secondcycle degree is 120 credits. The maximum scope of the degree is 200 credits and the second-cycle degree is 135 credits.
students must accumulate 300 credits. The standard workload for undergraduate students is 50 credits per semester. Most courses yield 12.5 credits.
Depending on the program, graduate students may need to accumulate between 100 to 400 credits for completion.
When assessing students, various factors are taken into account: class attendance, test results, homework grades, essays, projects or research papers, results of oral or written examinations, etc. These factors are assigned weights by the instructor depending on the goals and load of the course. As a result, students may be assessed based on some courses on their project work, in others on their exam scores.
The organization of student-centered learning faces certain difficulties. First, it necessitates a collection of a rather large amount of data both at the start of the IET as well as along the trajectory. Among others necessary input data include personal information, diagnostic and competency and professional test results, analysis of the digital footprint, school performance assessment results. Second, if we assume that, taking into account the rapid expansion of methods and channels of training, each student will face a wide variety of choices, then making a choice and the moving along the IET itself will become a problem.
In an environment of rapid change and expanding educational opportunities, educational choices are more likely to become situational, spontaneous and risky.
When building and implementing an IET, the following steps should be followed: collect and analyze the data of primary and subsequent diagnostics of students; analyze the digital profile of students (applicants); build a digital model of the educational process based on the curriculum; set the criteria for the IET; assign indicators and coefficients to the IET criteria; create recommendation scripts (for students / tutors / teachers / employers / scientific advisors / administrative departments of the university, etc.); gather students’ midterm and final exam results; introduce practical exercises in the form of games into the electronic information and educational environment and the IET in order to increase motivation for development and learning; develop formats for presentation of learning outcomes based on the IET (reports, student CVs, ratings).
The basic system that will guide the student through the implementation of the IET involves 4 core components. The first component is making a choice and comprehending your activities. The second step is setting personal goals that lead to a specific result. In the third step, you achieve the goals and, finally, reflect on the results and readjust if necessary. A schematic basic diagram is shown in Figure 1. • Why am I doing it? • What did I do?
Achievment • What do I want? • What direction am I
headed? • How do I achieve
results? • What problems am I solving?
The iterative tasks facing the developers of the IET model are determined by using functional and morphological analysis, which is presented in Figure 2. It is important to understand that to determine the main and secondary functions, it is necessary to use the test questions method and study the static and dynamic characteristics of the IET by defining its changes, algorithms of action and control.
IET
Based on the results of the MPV-analysis, its subject and content area become the starting point of the IET study. If we take into account the percentage of successful graduates and employed graduates or graduates who have their own business project as the main MPV indicator, then using the S-shaped development curve (R. Foster), we can get the following graph, which is shown in Figure 4.
In this case, the S-shaped curve reflects the relationship between time and changes of the MPV-index. The MPV-indicator goes as far as evolutionary development allows. When the limit is reached, a new paradigm is needed. The stages between two successful paradigms are called technology gaps; those who are the first to form a new paradigm gain an advantage.
The S-shaped curve analysis allows tracing the evolutionary chain of the IET, which is marked with the following elements:
"Student matrix" is a certificate of admission to the university, which also serves as a student's record book and curriculum, which serves as a basis for the resume when applying for a job in the civil service, in pedagogical and other organizations, and a place where recommendations are written ... Job placement is the practice of employing graduates (for example, in the USSR), which is mandatory for a certain period of time for both the graduate and the employer. It ensures the employment of young professionals and provides with social guarantees.
Internship is a special type of activity to gain work experience or improve professional qualifications, as well as to work in a specialty field during a certain trial period.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an application software for an educational institution designed to automate strategies for interaction with customers (students), build a unified electronic information and educational environment to support the educational process: keeping students' personal files, information segmentation, workflow automation, etc.
"Skill-passport" is a document certifying the score a student received on exams, a kind of "digital portrait of a professional". All the exam results are entered into a single information system, which allows graduates to receive skill-passports with test results in electronic form and send them to potential employers. IET is a personal (digitized) way of realizing a student's personal potential, reflecting his or her professional competencies, soft skills, social, athletic and creative achievements, as well as the ability for selflearning and self-study.
To make choices, record results, and properly combine subjects into a comprehensive curriculum, there
needs to be an adequate IET management system. Most of the foreign models of personalized learning that
we know of focus on the use of digital platforms. Among the best known are Summit High School in the
United States with a reach of 72,000, and Chinese bdschool.cn, with 170 million students on its platform.
The effectiveness of these platforms was confirmed in a 2015 study by RAND , which showed that learning
using platform solutions does not compromise academic results and, compared to traditional learning
(without IET), improves professional competence and flexible skills [
In platform solutions, the following set of services of the electronic information and educational environment is most often used in order for the IET to meet all the tasks of personalized learning: diagnostic service (detection of potential) service for collecting digital footprint; service for building digital profile; service for the analysis of alternative educational methods (formats) of training; tutor support service; service for creating a recommendation system (work with requests); online proctor service set-up; predictive analytics service.
Thus, with the use of certain methodological tools and a qualified team of educational stakeholders, a step-by-step transition to a personalized education model is possible for any educational organization.
Until a few years ago, the focus in teaching was on the transmission of basic knowledge. Today the transfer of knowledge is carried out in a stream, everything can be read and listened to by oneself. It is much more important for the modern generation to learn new things quickly, conveniently, and in various formats. Therefore, it is important that modern educational solutions are implemented in the electronic information and educational environment. Since professional and modern digital skills are closely related to "soft" and leadership skills, it became necessary to look for new approaches to learning, one of which is the construction and implementation of IET.
IET-based learning should have a consistent method that takes into account the individual learning pace of each student with the same workload to ensure equivalent quality results. In addition, IET-based learning should provide a learning environment in which the student can make choices, make independent decisions, take steps, and achieve results using educational resources. As a result, IET-based learning teaches the student to take responsibility for the process and results of self- development.