E-Learning and Smart-Education in Transport University

Abstract

The report examines some aspects of e-learning and smart-education in the training of transport engineers. If we consider classical e-learning and smart-education, we can distinguish three main approaches. Technological approach assumes that the main difference is in the technologies used. Organizational approach assumes that the very organization of the educational process determines what kind of education is being used now. And, finally, pedagogical approach is oriented to the form of presentation of material, formed skills and the results of training. Technological basis of e-learning in the Ural State University of Railroad Transport (USURT) is the platform Blackboard Learn, which is used in many countries around the world and is aimed at the implementation of various tasks. For example, it allows you to create an online course, available for viewing on various mobile devices. Development of electronic training courses allowed to solve the following tasks: 1 Ensuring around-the-clock access to the materials of the training program for all students. 2 Managing the trajectories of student learning. 3 Involving students in teamwork using built-in communication tools. 4 The possibility of organizing a centralized and independent evaluation of student work using a variety of testing and knowledge validation tools. 5 Preparation of reports on student learning and the dynamics of student performance in the academic discipline. 6 Preparation of reports on the degree of correspondence between sections and training activities created within the framework of the course and the requirements of the Russian federal educational standard. 7 Development of additional motivation for learning by providing additional modern services for obtaining knowledge. 8 Ensuring the accounting, control and planning of training at the level of the educational institution, groups of students and each individual student. From the technological point of view, e-learning is considered as a stage of transition to the means of smart-education. Unlike e-learning, the concept of smart-education assumes the presence of elements in the education system, ensuring rapid adaptation of the entire system to the changing demands of the external environment, not just the learning process. Smart technologies are a visualization of intellectual systems; we can say that they are born at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Here we come to another dimension of smart-education, namely, organizational one. The principal difference of smart-education, in our opinion, is that the humanitarian disciplines in it are not included as an additional, albeit necessary, appendage of professional education, but are organically combined together with technical and natural science disciplines within a single educational program. Such an association provides intensive development of cognitive engineering and creates prerequisites for the pedagogical measurement of smart-education. Here, the formation of cognitive competence among students is at the forefront, the general feature of which is proposed to outline cognitive-complex thinking. The report shows how the interactive system developed by us, being an intelligent simulator for accelerated training of dispatchers in the efficient management of transport objects, is consistent with the modern concept of smart-education.