Designing of web-service for modeling student’s personal study pathway

Students of higher educational institutions often face the problem of designing an individual study pathway. The following analysis will not be about general electronic educational courses with open access but rather focus on local level, i.e. when the student can choose education courses from a concrete higher education institution (faculty). It is important to understand what criteria are necessary to design a student’s personal study pathway and what factors influence on this choice. We will investigate the research conducted by the company SAP together with VCIOM. It was devoted to the development of young IT specialists in the IT industry of the countries of Euroasian union (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan). This research analyzes more than 5000 CVs of young specialists and more than 1400 students of higher education institutions. 400 working recent graduates under 30 years were questioned as well. Moreover, opinions of more than 30 experts from the IT community were collected. The research revealed that 87% of students made their choice of future profession coincidentally and the choice was usually taken by the following criteria: • A long-term employment guarantee (42% of total interviewed students and 49% of the interviewed young specialists). • Social prestige of the profession. Choice of a prestigious fashionable specialty (20% of total interviewed students and 40% of the interviewed young specialists) • High salary of the chosen profession (32% of total interviewed students and 37% of the interviewed young specialists). It is worth mentioning that the idea of “being predestined for the profession” comes on the fourth place (31% of total interviewed students and 38% of the interviewed young specialists). Consequently, the research indicates the strong influence of public opinion and the condition of the labor market on the choice of the students. The mere fact of receiving higher education also plays a role due to social prestige. According to the 3rd generation-FGOS (Educational Standarts) and the FGOS 3, higher education institutions present to students not only a pool of obligatory basic disciplines but also the right to select various training courses in order to create the individual curriculum (IC). This yields the opportunity for students to coordinate the exact outline of their education, thereby improving the personal study pathway (PSP). On top of the aforementioned opportunities, the student has the right to choose classes from the open classrooms. These are optional training courses which serve as addition to the general educational program and give the chance to students to engage themselves in additional spheres that are interesting them. It is reasonable to assume that the students, who make their choice about PSP in a coincidental manner and therefore without concrete educational goals, are not following criteria that are necessary for an effective/meaningful PSP. It is necessary to consider that there is probability of difficulties in designing PSP even for the students who chose their future profession back in school years. We want to introduce the creation of a web service which helps students to make their choice in a suitable PSP. This service is required to have objective and universal criteria which can be used for all educational programs in order to help designing and realizing effective PSPs for each student. In our opinion, the main design criterion for the web service is that it must be in line with the aim of receiving necessary knowledge, skills and competencies for future employment. The service is supposed to focus on a sphere in the labor market or on a concrete profession within this sphere. Communication with the user is carried out as follows: In the initial stage the service offers the user the most relevant professional areas and professions depending on the education program. The search of the most relevant education courses from available elective courses takes place. It is important to notice that the choice of the user remains for the entire period of training and can be changed only in the next academic year and only if choosing a new PSP. In this process it is necessary to solve the following problems: - to define the match between the education program and professional sphere (profession); - to define the match between education courses and professional sphere (professions) chosen by the user. Based on this information, it will be easy to define the «matching» between two objects, thereby defining and allocating the most relevant matches. In other words, between each registered professional sphere and each of the education courses there must be established a certain relation of relevance R (p, c) , where p is the name of professional sphere, c is the name of a course, a R is the relation which is an ascribed positive number. The latter indicates the degree of complementarity of a course for concrete professional sphere. Courses with the highest indicators are offered to students in order to create the most effective PSP. The described web service will help to solve the problem of designing an individual PSP for each student of a higher educational institution. This will help create effective PSPs in the electronic educational environment, taking into account the ‘designing’ of a student’s competence profile. Certainly, this service will not solve all problems which we face in the educational process. However, the proposed web service will definitely promote a more conscious approach to education on behalf of the students, modeling the student’s future and the strategy for the student’s future life in the context of continuous education (lifelong learning). Undoubtedly, the problem of mapping students’ individual study pathway is currently one of the topical issues in modern education, and, in order to choose the most effective models of designing ISP, a thorough research into the global experience in this sphere is essential.

Keywords

Authors

References