DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TOOLS FOR FINAL QUALIFICATION ASSESSMENT IN ORIENTAL LANGUAGES PROGRAMS

Abstract

The global pandemic and subsequent quarantine measures and restrictions have posed a challenge to communicative skills development in the structure and procedure of the university summative assessment process. Qualification assessment for Foreign Languages major programs, in particular, is a strict regimen process that involves different communicative stages (oral and written exams, final project viva, internal and external review) that derive the need to elaborate complex communication skills and use an array of targeted information communication tools. This study seeks to analyze the practices of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University digital qualification assessment for students of Asian (Mandarin, Japanese) Languages major programs, employed in the year 2020 due to quarantine measures. In the educational sphere, the result of the COVID-19 pandemic development was the need to take quick action in order to achieve such desirable results: 1) to adapt the existent educational scenarios to digital, remote, and blended communicative formats; 2) to boost information and communication technology competence and digital literacy of all participants of the educational process. The investigation seeks to identify various groups of applied digital skills and communicative skills, utilized through the qualification assessment process by all parties (students, faculty, and referees). In a networked society of the early 21st century, structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and communication. The survey and analysis of different information and communication technology tools are used to translate real-life qualification assessment practices into the online blended communicative format. Comparative results of ICT tools and communicative activity practices efficiency for respondents of Oriental languages programs are provided. Communication, collaboration, and teamwork are evaluated as crucial soft skills in various combinations within the scenario of digital Final Qualification Assessment. Implementation of Final Qualification Assessment via various information and communication tools requires of participants of educational process elementary to intermediate digital literacy. These results corroborate the correspondence between communicative competence and digital technology competence components, adapted for Liberal Arts.