Experience of Universities in Practice-Oriented Training Personnel for High-Tech Enterprises

Abstract

Introduction Taking into account the nowadays realities, the transition of universities to the base (WBL) is imperative whereas many teachers declare the successful use for a long time of certain elements of this teaching method. Thus, in the second half of the last century one of the authors, being a third year student of Moscow Institute of steel and alloys in the group of five students of one specialty according to the decision of the academic council was transferred to individual curriculum with free attendance. All students in this group studied special magnetic materials and each one already had research topic, scientific advisor and certain achievements. Each student of this group obtained special curriculum approved by the University academic Council from which quite a lot of disciplines were withdrawn, not in fact necessary for the profession. Instead of withdrawn equal or greater number of other special disciplines were added, some of which was supposed to be studied at other institutions. Time released due free attendance was designed for additional courses and scientific work according to the planned project. The above model of educational and scientific work of students is a limiting case of individual project work and its individuality is the only drawback. The advantage of the model was a good linkage of the project topic with the curriculum. It should be recognized that, in general, all participants in the work program were overloaded, in some cases significantly, but in the presence of a free attendance it was quite tolerable. The experiment described finished quite successfully: two participants continued their education as postgraduates, the rest were distributed to the best specialized academic and branch research institutes. This model can be easily improved. So individual project-based learning described above can be transformed into a team project learning by giving more complex task to the group of 3 or 4 students. Maybe one should start using this method avoiding 100% coverage and select applicants individually, on a voluntary basis, emphasizing to the volunteers great personal responsibility. In the same years in Moscow Institute of steel and alloys another component of the project-based learning was successfully implemented. It was a particular type of laboratory works on special courses that do not guarantee known result in advance. The model of such project-based learning is well illustrated in the following example, taken from actual practice of the Department of metallography, 1972. The group of students of 3-4 people were asked to obtain magnetically hard material with a specified interval of magnetic energy. In this particular case, the task was allocated 6 hours = 4+2 with an interval of a week, because of long heat treatment required technologically. During the second laboratory work the teams measured the properties in the presence of a teacher and defended the technology applied in the work. If desired, any special laboratory work can be transformed into project. This, of course, will inevitably produce some problems for the learning Department, since the duration of laboratory work-projects can be much larger than traditional laboratory work, but the benefit will be much higher. It is also clear that the specificity of training areas will affect the organizational scheme of such works. At the end of the excursus into history the pre-diploma practice at the Institute of steel and alloys should be mentioned. As a rule, they were carried out at leading companies or research institutes. With rare exceptions, students were given the themes of real projects, the results of which were often taken as a basis for further graduate work. Speaking about well-known in Russian higher education models of work-based learning we should first of all mention the vtuz--plant system adequate to the cooperative study in USA. …