PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF PROJECT-BASED LEARNING AT THE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The modern system of higher education involves the active implementation of the practice-oriented approach, which is based not only on the educational process, but also on the formation of a student’s personality. The introduction of a practice-oriented approach implies students’ acquiring both practical and social competencies, which will be necessary for them in their future professional activity. Project activity in Higher School of Economics (HSE) is presented as a separate type of students’ educational activity within an educational program, credit units for it corresponding to specific forms of organization and control. The project seminar is an educational form of organizational and educational support for project activities. The project seminar is not directly related to the forms of projects implementation. It aims at forming students’ project competencies, skills of project interaction, and project management. The practice of implementing a project seminar within undergraduate programs began in 2014, within graduate programs – in 2018. This paper analyzes the undergraduate students’ practice of project work in educational programs of economic profile. The study is based on the analysis of HSE – Perm. The survey involved 117 respondents, including 8 teachers, 5 customer representatives, and 104 students of different years (the sample corresponds to the confidence accuracy of 95 % with 10 % room for possible error and a total population of 983 students). Research question. Since 2014, HSE has been introducing a special practice of project-oriented training in undergraduate programs, which is to implement projects and a project seminar and to involve students in practical programs (applied projects). This practice has methodological support in the form of local regulations, but, in fact, there are ample opportunities for educational programs, as far as the peculiar features of implementation are concerned. At the same time, a large number of participants have been included in the process of implementing this practice. It is this research that is supposed to identify common benefits and difficulties in implementing this approach. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to evaluate the practice of introducing project-oriented education on the example of undergraduate economic programs at HSE – Perm, to find out corresponding problems, and to identify ways of improving this process.