Tutor support as a pedagogical condition for the project activities implementation of university students

Abstract

Introduction. The rapid development of modern society forces the labor market to impose constantly updated requirements on university graduates. However, higher education programs do not have the desired dynamics of change in their content, because they tend to meet the current needs rather than new, potentially possible employment terms at the end of four-year course of university study. This situation of uncertainty questions the long-term planning of graduates’ professional activities, which makes it necessary to set such an approach to educational process that will result in graduates’ developing the ability to define their own values, find resources to implement their goals, organize professional activities and reflect on them. The implementation of such an idea is possible through tutoring, which has the potential to facilitate the creation and development of the individual educational trajectory.Materials and Methods. The study is based on a theoretical analysis and interpretation of the pedagogical literature on the topic under consideration, the methods of synthesis, analogy, systematization in order to summarize and compare the data.Results. The need to meet modern standards and requirements has stimulated the introduction of project work in the curricular practice plans at Samara State Technical University. In this regard, tutoring is an important part of the university teaching and learning process, designed to improve students’ academic performance and enable them to achieve their professional goals. The tutoring experience was initially gained while working with the project team to create a virtual reality program for foreign language learning (2016-2019). Tutor support is considered as a pedagogical condition aimed at updating and creating the integrity of the educational content through an individual trajectory, taking into account the personal characteristics and needs of the learner. It is considered as a basic strategy for any model of learning, student guidance, individualization and control. Currently the project work is carried out on the basis of the following educational tracks – “Leader School”, “Technological Entrepreneurship” and “Higher Scientific School”, focused on the development of students’ project and research competencies, which can be fixed as their own competence growth.Discussion and Conclusions. The essence of tutoring as an effective practice of educational process individualization is revealed. The role of interactive position of a teacher in the implementation of tutoring practice is noted. It is concluded that since the tutor's task is to help the student with the optimal choice of resources for constructing his own educational trajectory, the practice of such interaction should be applied in universities to form a flexible approach for students to solve problems in future professional sphere. A large rate of independence during the learning process allows students to engage in goal-setting, self-improvement, reflection, so these components will not cause difficulties in their further professional life.