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Redesigning Science Classes Through the e-Classes Project’s Initiatives

Author(s): Anca Cristina COLIBABA,Irina Gheorghiu,Cintia Colibaba,Ramona CIRSMARI,Rodica Gardikiotis,Anais Colibaba / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The article is a study based on the e-Classes project, a project funded by the European Commission (under the Erasmus+ programme) for the years 2017-2019 within an international partnership including institutions (schools, teacher training centres, non-governmental educational organisations and IT centres) from Bulgaria, Italy, Spain and Romania. The project aims to help both VET teachers to revise and strengthen their professional profile and young people to increase their motivation to study science and improve their academic performance. The project has created a collection of videos illustrating basic scientific concepts from science school subjects, on which the project's method relies. The method, the flipped classroom, highly encourages a student-centred learning environment, maximizing students' participation in online and offline activities. The paper presents the method, which uses the videos made by teachers as the main channel of content delivery, and discusses its benefits and challenges. The paper focuses on the findings of the flipped classroom experiment carried out with students studying at several vocational high schools in Iasi as well as the new roles that the participants, teachers, students and companies, may have in the educational process. It also gives details on how teachers can design their own flipped lessons, implement the flipped methodology and integrate ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and OER (Open Educational Resources) in traditional teaching.

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Sustained Silent Reading and Specialised Vocabulary for ESP. A Case Study

Author(s): Alexandra Cotoc / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Sustained silent reading is a weekly routine activity meant to enhance students’ interest in extended reading of authentic texts, meant to improve their critical thinking abilities, socio-cultural knowledge, attention, reading skills and vocabulary. Hence, in our ESP course, SSR is used as a weekly activity both in class and at home, introducing our students to the topic under focus, but also keeping them engaged with the topic for the entire week. Our SSR project represents a continuation of a pilot project initiated in the academic year 2017-2018 and involves the students at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. The SSR project 2018-2019 involves nine steps: 1. students familiarisation with the SSR concepts and requirements’ announcement; 2. texts sharing using google drive; 3. Weekly Facebook posts; 4. SSR performance during class time; 5. SSR homework; 6. analogue entry; 7. Optional delivery of presentations; 8. Online entry; 9. end of semester vocabulary test. As such, for ten minutes, at the beginning of each course, students have to read a text which focuses on the topic discussed in that course and selected by the teacher. The texts chosen are longer texts that the students have to finish at home. Students also receive the assignment to select three concepts from all the texts chosen for the SSR activity and three other concepts that they encountered in other courses and which are linked to their fields in general. They have to introduce them in a survey at the end of the semester, mentioning for each of them a definition, a context/a situation that reflects the usage of the concept and a translation. In order to prepare the students for this survey, during several courses, after SSR, the language instructor collects specialised concepts from the students, by involving them in various collaborative and interactive classroom activities. At the end of semester, students have the option to deliver presentations based on the SSR texts and the end of semester exam also contains concepts from the SSR. The SSR is an activity that helps our students improve their ESP skills, but at the same time, it has as an end result a collection of specialised texts and terminology, using a crowdsourcing technique which involves our students and gives them the role of experts in their fields.

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The Role of the Teacher of Foreign Languages in Online Environment and in Classical Classrooms

Author(s): Irina-Ana Drobot / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Given the interactive environment and communication through internet opportunities, learning foreign languages in a mass online course and by using audiovisual materials such as videos on YouTube, what is the current role of the foreign languages teacher? Is there a competition between classical, classroom learning and teaching of a foreign language and using what the internet offers? The paper argues for the role of the teacher in any environment as a source of motivation. We could draw a parallel with the way a therapist motivates his or her patient in a session with the way the same transference works in a teacher - student relationship. However, the online medium does offer more opportunities and more attractive material, as in mass online courses we interact with students and teachers from all over the world. The paper will also argue for more opportunities in an online environment given the fact that interacting with other students who are highly motivated also motivates any learner to continue with the study of the respective foreign language. While in a classical classroom the number of interested students may be scarce, in an online medium the situation can be different as there the classroom is never empty. Lack of interest or high interest from the part of the other student serve as a way to increase motivation and performance for the whole group. However, due to the fact that it is by your own decision that you take the study of a foreign language online, and no outside obligation from school, then the decision remains to yourself whether or not to continue. If you abandon the study, then no consequences will affect your activity. The question remains, though, to what extent and up to what age the teacher acts as a motivator for any student to continue with the study of a foreign language.

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Using e-Portofolios in Teaching English for Academic Purposes – Developing Independent Learning Skills

Author(s): Cristina Felea,Liana Stanca / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

E-portfolio; English for Specific Academic Purposes; Self-directed learning; Transversal skills;For almost two decades now, e-portfolios have represented a way to document the paradigm shift to a learner-centric approach in higher education due to technological advance. Extensive research has provided evidence for two major purposes for the implementation of e-portfolios: showcasing student achievements along their study programs and into the job market and supporting self-directed/independent learning by offering them the necessary scaffolding to take control of the learning process. This paper addresses a twofold need: in the local context, it aims to develop a research model that would facilitate the collection of data and a deeper understanding of the effects of the transition to a technology-enhanced learning environment. Within a more general context, it aims to contribute an analysis model of student learning in the digital era based on e-portfolios pedagogy. At both levels, students are considered as digital natives that are increasingly aware of and concerned with developing skills and strategies meant to facilitate a more efficient integration on the current dynamic job market. The study continues an almost decade long preoccupation with finding ways of embedding transversal and job-related skills in teaching foreign languages for specific academic purposes in Babes-Bolyai University and with facilitating students’ reflective practice and peer learning. The introduction of the e-portfolio as a collection of digital artefacts is related to the learning process and final outcomes in the area of information processing. Answers are expected to questions such as: do students see e-portfolios as efficient tools in developing their transversal and job-related skills? Does student engagement with the course increase during the process of building the e-portfolios? By following the process steps (managing their own learning), do students develop their self-directed skills and autonomy? To find out the answers, a quantitative analysis was performed on complex data collected from students’ work, learning outcomes and a final survey. A selection of data is also used to illustrate the potential of this instrument to help students become autonomous, independent learners, eager to participate actively in the learning process and capable to identify opportunities for self-improvement and a rich learning experience. The results are expected to offer important evidence on the fact that the sense of property and control over learning can be a high motivator in the learning process. The findings could also contribute to re(de)fining a de-centered perspective in pedagogy, where teacher and students work together to find solutions to develop and permanently adjust their competences to the academic and job market environments.

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Adapting STEM Automated Assessment System to Enhance Language Skills

Author(s): Marina Marchisio,Alice Barana,Francesco FLORIS,Alice Pulvirenti,Marta PULVIRENTI,Matteo SACCHET,Sergio Rabellino,Carla MARELLO / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Enhancing language skills is a duty for many institutions, schools and universities; Information and Communications Technology is nowadays supporting language teaching, heading also to the integration of foreigners. According to previous studies, the use of a Technology Enhanced Learning Environment can foster language competences through online tests. The goal of this paper is to show and discuss different typologies of automatically evaluated questions useful to learn languages and designed with an Automatic Assessment System, already successfully used for teaching STEM disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This work has been carried out thanks to the collaboration between the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Foreign Languages. Five different typologies of questions are analysed: "Combining sentence elements" asks to combine given elements to form at least three correct and meaningful sentences; "Find the mistake" asks whether a sentence is grammatically correct and to explain why; "The Target puzzle" asks to join words together using precise links; "Scrambled text" asks the student the correct sequence of sentences in a scrambled text; "The Encrypted Crossword puzzle" is a crossword puzzle without definition clues. Linguists consider these question types effective to develop language competences and have already used them profitably in traditional teaching and language learning. To engage the learner and increase motivation, we will develop an implementation where the questions are self-evaluated, always available, with immediate and interactive feedback. These tools could be used in online language courses and in all those teaching activities that are carried out remotely by the student alone. All questions are outlined with the explanation of the grading code and a triplet of descriptors; they describe the Performance, Requirements and Objectives of each question and allow further studies on automatic detection of the relatedness between different language learning objects, in order to construct adaptive language tests.

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Language and Safety: The Benefits of Using Audio Visual Aids in Teaching Aviation English

Author(s): Corina Marculescu / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Aviation English is unique in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) because in the aeronautical field, language is inseparable from safety. The passengers’ lives and safety depend on the accurate communication between pilots and air traffic control officers (ATCOs), on the precision of their language. My paper puts forward the suitability and effectiveness of using audio-visual aids (video clips, photographs, diagrams, maps, authentic audio recordings of voices with a variety of accents and pronunciations encountered in international flights) in aviation English teaching. The use of audio video digital technologies helps the students (especially aerospace engineering majors and air force academy students) to become familiar with the operational environment of aviation, to obtain a ‘feel’ for the conditions in which pilots and controllers communicate. Properly selected and relevant digital video or photographs “introduce” the students into the airport architecture (taxiways, runways, hangars, cargo areas etc.), in the control tower or in the pilots’ cockpit, into the world of pilots and ATCOs, of technicians and aerospace engineers. I will show that what matters even more is the teacher’s passion for the field and his/her consequent ability to devise the best and most motivating pre- and post-watching activities and discussions to stimulate the students to debate the aviation incidents presented, to practice the vocabulary they are likely to encounter in an aviation context, the standardized coded phraseology used in pilot-controller conversations to communicate clear, concise, unambiguous, internationally recognized messages of a routine nature, and the spontaneous, non-coded “plain” English which is crucial to master in non-routine, unexpected or emergency operational situations. The paper proposes a content-based, communicative approach to teaching Aviation English, supported by audio-video technology – which Generation Y students in particular find engaging and challenging. Technology properly embedded in the course and relevant to projects or seminar activities maintains the attention of today’s visual learners focused on the subject matter and inspires and motivates them to research and discover more about the communication in the aviation field.

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Teaching Professional Interviews with Online Resources – a Key Path to Success

Author(s): Mihaela Pricope,Simona Mazilu,Fabiola Popa / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Teaching foreign languages with online resources is a great source of creativity and innovation. That is why, the Internet use in teaching has become a motivating factor among students. Teaching language competences - listening, reading, writing and speaking – is enriched with the help of online resources used as valuable input for language lessons. The use of internet resources to teach English for Professional Communication offers students the possibility of becoming exposed to realia, that is, to valuable real situations and contexts of interaction. It is one thing to teach students tips about effective interviews, which can be passive and boring to a certain point, and another thing to show them good and bad examples of these. In this way, students become motivated and involved in a dynamic process of thoughtful decisions and understanding. This article shows the importance of teaching English for Professional Communication with online resources as a motivating factor which promotes understanding and learning by discovery. In the main body of this article we are providing a lesson scenario based on internet resources and the motivation for our choices. The lesson covers various aspects of the job interview context intended to make students aware of their own performance in a similar situation. As regards the content of a job interview, students will experience typical questions and answers comparing their theoretical knowledge of how an interview should be with real life performances that are very often far from the ideal. In this way, students can evaluate the interviewees and learn from their good and bad “moves”. As far as the framework of a job interview is concerned, students are also exposed to non verbal communication, rules of behavior, register, dress code, aspects which are highly influential in determining the outcome of a job interview. Therefore, such an e-lesson may be considered a useful and pleasant experience that prepares students for the complexity of a real life job interview situation.

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The Importance of Multimedia in Teaching/Learning the Specialized Languages

Author(s): Victoria Vîntu,Argentina CHIRIAC,Tatiana TREBEȘ,Aliona Busuioc / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The process of learning represents an individual organization of a specific content that does not mean a simple memorization. It implies a complex demarche that includes a set of cognitive processes as intellectual interaction, informing, critical analysis. The active and interactive involving of students in the teaching process depends on their interests and preferences. The implementation of additional informational instruments is favorable for access to offer new learning opportunities. The implementation of informational technologies during the lessons of Romanian language, especially in the process of learning the specialized language, presents a series of advantages. Due to IT, the teaching process obtains a particular character. The teachers pay attention to such modern instruments as e-books, didactic applications, videos. The lesson becomes a laboratory where students have the opportunity to discover new linguistic structures, models, to use words in unexpected contexts. Another advantage of using informational technologies is the chance to assimilate a large amount of information in a short period of time. Students get the opportunity to improve their knowledge, their skills of oral and written comprehension. There are various categories of people (students, teachers), each with a well-defined role. The process of teaching the specialized language is a specifical one. The teacher will pay attention to such aspects as the conditions of the study process, the specifics of the target audience, the level of the linguistic knowledge, the level of training in the concerned field, so to the way both foreign language and the specialized language will be used.

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Corpus-based Research and Romanian Teachers of EFL. Examining Key Aspects of English Usage

Author(s): Ruxandra Vișan / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The present paper seeks to highlight the way in which online corpora of English can be employed by Romanian teachers as a valuable tool which provides significant insights into key aspects of English usage. In this respect, the paper will focus on the BYU corpora (https://corpus.byu.edu/corpora.asp) and on the way in which Romanian teachers of EFL at an advanced level can be encouraged to make use of these widely available corpora, turning them into valuable research and teaching resources. In order to illustrate the way in which the BYU corpora can become a useful resource for Romanian teachers, the paper focuses on a key aspect concerning the usage of English, the frequency of and variation between the phrases didn't use to/ didn't used to. The issue of employing didn’t use to versus didn’t used to is a challenging aspect in the teaching of English for upper intermediate/advanced learners, with a number of prescriptive grammars listing the form didn’t used to as "incorrect usage". However, it is to be noted that a significant number of descriptive grammars list didn’t used to as acceptable, and do not even label it as "non-standard". The paper discusses how further research, in which the use of the BYU corpora is central, can help teachers acquire a nuanced view of the issue and adopt an effective teaching strategy in this respect. The paper attempts to show how the use of the BYU corpora can allow teachers a better understanding of such key aspects of English usage, providing significant guidelines concerning the teaching of English to Romanian students.

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Information and Documentation through New Technologies in E-Learning Process

Author(s): Doina Banciu,Ionuț PETRE,Radu Boncea / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

The paper presents the results of research projects developed in the field of Information management by the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics. Considering the high-paced growth of information generated in the current Information Society, a high-quality e-learning process must deliver a significant amount of content to a large number of users. The paper presents the development, from concept to release, of a platform destined for promoting culture at different levels of users. It shows how the e-learning process could be organized around the integrated information regarding one or more cultural objectives. Technical innovations and the exponential expansion of online resources changed the way society works. Nowadays the classic method of learning, based on books, source code samples, magazines and journals, is losing ground in favour of e-Learning which is based on internet resources such as documents, applications and tools that are accessed using a personal computer or any another smart device. Considering the high-paced growth of information generated in the current Information Society, a high-quality e-learning process must deliver a significant amount of content to a large number of users. Technology is now facilitating the distribution of knowledge through software tools, in order to create a wide variety of learning possibilities for all sorts of users. A platform for information and documentation that integrates the IT&C technologies to deliver cultural information, with facilities that appeal to the public, is a qualitative and quantitative point of access. The technical considerations for the implementations of this project are also described in the paper.

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Machine Learning Based Methods Used for Improving Scholar Performance

Author(s): Radu Boncea,Ionuț PETRE,Victor Adrian VEVERA,Alexandru Gheorghiță / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

In their 1968 study "The Teaching-Learning Paradox: A Comparative Analysis of College Teaching Methods", Robert Dubin and Thomas Taveggia found no evidence to indicate any basis for preferring one teaching method over another as measured by the performance of students on course examinations. The conclusion is based on systematic reanalysis of the data of almost 100 comparative studies of different college teaching methods. The teaching-learning process is virtually a black box in which the teaching methods do not influence scholar performance. So rather than focusing on teaching methods, we propose a method for improving scholar performance by a continuous and intelligent monitoring and assessing process of daily knowledge gains. Recent developments in machine learning and data analysis, allow us the use of techniques for unveiling the strengths and weaknesses in the learning process. Our proposed solution is “micro-assessing” each student and after each course, by sending a 5 minutes-long mini test on their smartphones, collects the result and send it for analysis to a dedicated platform. When the system has sufficient data, it can personalize the tests for each student with focus on areas the student is lacking. It can make recommendations, to teachers, students, school and competent authorities at local or national level. The solution is not a replacement for classical examinations, but it augments the learning experience through interactive and personalized quizzes. The teacher also has a better view over student’s knowledge, thus he can do better assessments overall. Student abnormal deviations could be detected much faster, while competent authorities could assess the impact of their decisions in near-realtime.

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Accessibility of the Digital Scientific Literature – A Study on Researchers’ Perspective

Author(s): Elena Popescu / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

Today, we are witnessing a significant increase in high quality scientific literature, either born digital or digitized. According to a series of specialists in education, research activities affect education and a specialized dialogue between researchers and students can affect the quality of research output. This study takes into consideration this interplay between research and education - even in the form of e-learning and digital information -, and analyzes the accessibility of digital scientific literature offered by Romanian research libraries. Firstly, the study presents findings obtained through exploration of existing specialized digital repositories worldwide and in Romania, high quality digital scientific literature, renowned databases of journals, e-learning platforms, along with open access initiatives. These digital resources need to be better identified and this paper is framed by consideration of different ways to make visible the scientific output. In general, researchers use data and information from other studies and, also, they need to communicate and disseminate their results rapidly to the international academic community, by means of digital repositories and digital publications. Secondly, this research identifies findings from an empirical analysis regarding the experiences and preferences of the Romanian researchers and, also, a series of aspects regarding the role of librarians in digital literacy. Several methods are used, including qualitative interviews, questionnaires, corroboration across participants and engagement with previous international studies. The study concludes with the current trends observed for Romanian research libraries and a series of considerations for practice, with the remark that academic work in institutes and universities varies substantially across fields and disciplines, which can prohibit a generalization to all research libraries in Romania.

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E-Learning Process through Cloud Facilities

Author(s): Ionuț-Eugen Sandu,Mihail Dumitrache / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2019

e-Learning platforms help users (students / learners, tutors / instructors and administrators) aiming to offer them the information they need in order to develop their educational activities at the right time, following an appropriate format and in the location they desire. Along with the development of Internet, the need for virtual systems that would allow users to migrate data, e-mails, applications etc. has emerged, these virtual systems becoming the Cloud Computing technology. The current paper highlights the results of implementation of a Cloud system dedicated to citizens, public institutions and academia. ICIPRO project (Cloud Infrastructure for Public Institutions in Romania) was implemented at ICI Bucharest with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Open Data and Virtual Library. So far, 32 institutions have been affiliated and are using this Cloud infrastructure, including 4 libraries and 5 universities. The logical architecture of the ICIPRO Cloud system presented in this paper meets the highest business requirements, such as security, availability, ease of administration and resource optimization. In order to accomplish this, the system has been divided into several subsystems, such as: the Infrastructure Management Subsystem that relies on a suite of applications required to manage and monitor the virtualization platform, the dedicated server subsystem where powerful servers can meet requirements specific to mission critical environments, with on-the-fly activation / deactivation of Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA) enabled processing kernels, 2 high-capacity subsystems consisting of high-density servers designed for Cloud Computing environments, that rack up to a high processing capacity and provide high performances, compared to power consumption.

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Ontologies - Facilitators for Curriculum Design in Centers of Excellence for Engineering Education

Author(s): Maria-Iuliana Dascălu,Elisabeth Lazarou,Melania NIȚU,Iulia-Cristina Stănică,Constanţa-Nicoleta Bodea,Alexandra-Maria DOBRESCU / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

Ontologies are engineering artefacts which reduce conceptual and terminological confusion by providing a unified framework for describing the concepts of the world and their relations. Thus, they improve communication and cooperation between people and organizations. Also, ontologies are cross-platforms, cross-applications, thus they are facilitators for software interoperability, and they provide reusability, reliability, specification. In e-learning, ontologies are used to improve personalization, search and retrieval, learning domain description, learner profile modelling, feedback implementation, assessment, but also curriculum modelling and management. In this paper, we focus on this last-mentioned application of ontologies. In curriculum development, ontologies foster the transparency, collaboration, exchangeability and interoperability, support the alignment, classification, comparison, and matching between universities, educational systems or relevant disciplines, help in managing the educational offerings of an institution, revealing useful information like course overlapping, uncovered or less covered areas, possible synergies between courses, support course recommendation. Besides highlighting the best practices of ontologies in curriculum development (e.g. the Bologna Ontology, the BBC Curricula Ontology or the CCSO ontology), we propose an ontological model for curriculum design in centres of excellence in engineering education developed within the Erasmus+ Capacity Building EXTEND project and underline the possible advantages brought by them in the network of centres - knowledge transfer between centres in different countries and regions, exchange activities between those centres, double graduation certificates and so on. Also, our proposed ontology contains the competences which are considered necessary results for a teacher training program in engineering education within EXTEND framework and facilitates the interrogation of the curriculum via dedicated SPARQL queries.

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ARVEE - An Innovative Application based on Virtual Reality for Immersive Education

Author(s): Maria-Iuliana Dascălu,Tudor Mihai Ursachi,Robert Brezoaie,Iulia-Cristina Stănică,George Drăgoi / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

The current paper proposes a new way of experiencing learning, based on the concept of immersive education with the help of an emergent technology: virtual reality. Traditional education is extremely limited in terms of experimentation, and nowadays the evolving technologies aim to solve this shortcoming in order to give students the chance to experience studying in a different manner. At present, the emphasis is usually on teaching the theory basics, while the practical aspects are often ignored and treated superficially, especially in the engineering domain. Implementing immersive education enables both students and teachers to understand any school subject, but also to experience it in real time, thus getting in touch with the most important aspects of that domain. The approach presented in our paper is accomplished through a mobile application called ARVEE, which proposes an interactive, fun and yet educational way of learning astronomy and making students pursue a career in astronomical engineering or in fields related to manufacturing of accessories for astronomical telescopes and instruments. Using virtual reality, students can experience and learn easier the broad concepts of a school subject. The application proposes to combine both traditional and immersive education, the result being the use of virtual reality not only for recreational but also for educational purposes. The application was tested on a group of primary school pupils enrolled in an extracurricular programming club, and the results were extremely satisfying. Besides presenting our app and the way it can support the current educational challenges (e.g. lack of practical exercises), we also analyzed some other existing virtual reality applications that offer similar experiences to the one implemented by ARVEE.

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Virtual Educational Environment as One of the Perspective Technologies of e-Learning in Foreign Language Teaching

Author(s): Angelina I. Dubskikh,Yulia Savinova,Anna V. Butova / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

Currently, training of professional engineers able to be competitive with foreign counterparts in the international labor market is one of the most important problems of Russian technical universities. To achieve this goal, graduates of engineering universities are required to speak a foreign language at the appropriate level to follow the latest advances in science and technology and become professional and competent experts in their field. Teaching a foreign language in the current context is an important task in the complex of humanitarian training in a technical university, as future specialists, speaking a foreign language, keep themselves open to their professional activities. UNESCO experts and governments of different countries come to the conclusion that good results can be achieved if universities use e-learning foreign language management systems. It is a brand-new technology of education for life in the information society, orienting a student to a new work style, developing skills and abilities for continuing education. The e-learning(EL) technology completely changes a person’s attitude to education, provides an opportunity to learn anywhere, anytime, and throughout life, even without leaving home and not crossing borders. In recent decades the problem of building successful EL-strategies for learning a foreign language has become extremely relevant and widely discussed throughout the world. Innovative foreign language courses are being developed and implemented using EL technologies in many technical universities. Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (the RF) is not an exception. E-learning has long been actively implemented in the educational process of the university. On the basis of the Moodle virtual educational environment, an educational portal was created. The portal contains a catalog of courses on the main subjects taught in the university. The goal of this article is to consider the implementation of e-learning technologies in the following fields: Foreign Language, Foreign Language in Professional Activities, Business Foreign Language, Professionally-Oriented Translation, the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools for optimal organization of educational activities.

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Learning of Supporting-Motor System

Author(s): Elena KIRINA,Iurii STROGANOV / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

Desktop application for teaching the structure of the musculoskeletal system. Contains information about all bones and muscles and how to connect them. The application should run on Windows, Linux and MasOS. Visual representation in the form of a 3D model based on Unity. Realistic three-dimensional human model can be rotated and viewed from any angle. Select items by mouse click for detailed information about them. The ability to add your notes and signatures to parts of the system, so you can keep your own notes and make only the necessary information. All information is stored in a database. Latin will help to unify knowledge. Also all names will be given in accordance with international anatomical terminology (FIAT). Provide a function that allows you to select and study the desired system in isolation. For example, show only bones or only muscles. This will help to better understand the structure of individual systems. The application will be useful for both school and University studies. Due to the 3D view can learn and people who do not have a high medical or biological education. In recent decades, many software systems have been developed to systematize information about human anatomy. Using such programs is much more convenient than the usual paper collection. In addition, they can always take with you and quickly find what you need. Interactive interaction facilitates the learning process, provides mobility of access to information, makes it clearer and more understandable. Also, these systems can be used to develop mechanical analogues of the human body, which is currently a popular and promising direction of technology development.

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E-Learning Resources as a Means of Developing Engineering Students’ Soft Skills

Author(s): Yulia Savinova,Natalia Sivtseva,Svetlana Latysheva / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

Within the context of the Bologna process referring to an intergovernmental higher education reform the period of the future specialists’ training is shortening, consequently, more time is spent on developing the students’ hard skills that is special skills connected with the peculiarities of the definite profession. However, the research based on the surveys analysis shows that soft skills are one of the most significant parts of the career advancement. It is usually difficult to define the level of one’s soft skills as they cover different skills helping to organize the professional activity in the best way. Among them there is motivation, leadership, comprehensive knowledge and knowledge of a foreign language as well. It allows concluding that language training is one of the priority orientations. The article is an attempt to show that e-learning resources can be helpful in solving the problem of correlation between class hours and self-guided work hours. The findings of the research are proved by the survey among the engineering students (bachelors) of Irkutsk State Research Technical University and Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University who had the opportunity to access advantages and disadvantages of learning English with the help of e-learning resources. Two groups of students were surveyed: those who initially studied English using the traditional approach and those who switched from the e-learning approach to the traditional one. The analysis showed that both groups regard the knowledge of English as a necessary component of the career advancement, as well as they note the domination of advances in using e-learning resources while mastering the English language.

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Electronic Terminological Mini-Dictionary in the Context of Cognitive and Methodological Challenges

Author(s): Yulia Savinova,Svetlana Pozdnyakova,Natalia MOKROVA / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

The article deals with elaboration of electronic terminological mini-dictionary in the context of cognitive and methodological challenges. It is known that the reliance on cognitive processes, such as representation, storing, processing, interpretation and reproduction of new knowledge, creates conditions for effective foreign language professional communication teaching. The article substantiates a cognitive approach as a conceptual basis for elaborating a new model of mini-dictionary of terminology units. This approach enabled the authors to set the unit of the dictionary selection – the term-concept (TC) as “operative unit of memory”. When mastering TC, learners’ mind has a complicated chain of cognitive processes of emergence and forming of scientific notions, which are professionally-coloured ones. Definitely, TC as a specific mental unit, is verbalized in the language system by the lexical unit of terminology character, which represents a fragment of professional reality and determines a special concept of engineering field of knowledge. Following cognitive imperatives, the authors revealed lingvodidactic and cognitive principles of ТС selection. Taking them into account, methodological and cognitive grounds for organizing mini-dictionary of terminologically-marked lexis have been substantiated. The conceptual field as a unit of terminological mini-dictionary has the property to integrate all grounds for creating an optimal, systemically-modelled mini-dictionary. In accordance with cognitive ideas about the mental essence of the concept, the selected contour of the mini-dictionary field is some kind of professionally-organized environment, which helps to model in the cognitive mind of students the whole integrity of concepts, or integrated fragment of professional concept-sphere, which reflects systematic knowledge of specific highly-professional educational disciplines. The cognitive vision of the process of a new format mini-dictionary elaboration enabled the authors to shift accents from linguistic phenomena to mental processes. Organization of the mini-dictionary predetermined the necessity of using praxeological approaches, in the course of which the authors elaborated a cognitively-set algorithm of students’ work with the electronic version of the mini-dictionary. Thus, electronic mini-dictionary in the context of cognitive and methodological challenges becomes a guide to the terminological world of students’ specialty with specific professional shell, and serves a kind of catalyst of adequate understanding of foreign language terminology.

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Introduction and Use of Modern Educational Technologies in Education in the Republic of Tajikistan

Author(s): Daler Sharifi,Alla Aslitdinova / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2019

The changing socio-economic situation in the modern world has led to the need to modernize the education, rethink theoretical approaches and the accumulated practice of educational institutions in the Republic of Tajikistan. The main direction of the strategic development of Tajikistan in modern conditions is comprehensive modernization, the key prerequisite of which is the presence of social actors with innovative potential and opportunities for its implementation. Creating a solid base for the successful development of modernization processes is impossible without the participation of the higher education system in this process. Modern information technologies are actively being introduced into the educational process in the Republic of Tajikistan. Educational institutions are equipped with a variety of network equipment and computer equipment, allowing them to integrate into the worldwide Internet. All this has changed the distance learning and made it really effective in the modern world. The proliferation of “fast Internet” made it possible to use audio and video broadcasting, audio and video conferencing, online conferences, webcasts, as well as online simulators and game managers that simulate learning processes that give basic management skills to both a small company and large. Today there is no need to prove that the twenty-first century, admittedly, is becoming the century of globalization and the erasure of borders, information and communication technologies and the Internet. Modern society is involved in the general historical process, called “informatization”. Tajikistan is creating the prerequisites for the development of distance learning, creating bases for the development of multimedia lessons and video lessons, the opportunity for videoconferencing, a number of projects being implemented. Currently, some higher educational and scientific institutions of the country are already connected to the educational portal and the Internet, which allows introducing into the educational process methods of distance learning, a wide range of information and communication services for students. The Republic of Tajikistan has set itself the goal - to create the necessary opportunities and conditions for our children to grow up fully and harmoniously developed people with the most modern intellectual knowledge, people who fully meet the requirements of the XXI century in which they will live and work.

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