AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
THE MODEL OF UNIVERSITY TRAINING OF PROFESSIONALS FOR THE IRON AND STEEL
INDUSTRY
ALEXANDER KOZHEVNIKOV
Engineering Department, Cherepovets State University,
Cherepovets, Russia
162600, 5, Lunacharsky str.,Cherepovets, Russia,
email:avk7777@bk.ru
This research was financially supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of
Russian Federation within the framework of the project part of state task of
Cherepovets State University № 11.3943.2017/4.6).
Abstract: The model of approach to designing educational programmes of professional
engineering personnel training for research activities, creation of new products and
development of iron and steel works is proposed. The model differs from the
traditional approach within the education massification, it differs in certain academic
mobility, freedom and a personalized approach to students.
Keywords: design of engineering educational programmes for the iron and steel
industry, inter-disciplinarity, multi-professional competences, engineering personnel
competences, mass, personalized education, modernization of universities’ educational
policies
1 Introduction
The modern iron and steel industry has some unique features. On
the one hand, technologies and scientific principles known from
the 18th and 19th century are still used in it, and on the other
hand, in the past 30 to 50 years, this industry has become so
complicated due to development of information technologies, the
power industry and automation, that it requires specialists of
higher level compared to those trained 10 to 15 years ago [1].
In the context of stiff global competition of world steel making
companies, expenses per 1 tonne of product are one of key
criteria of competition. In this respect, the issues of headcount
optimisation and specialist model change through development
of his or her multi-functional professional knowledge and skills
are of high importance at metallurgical enterprises. In addition,
there is a demand for specialists who are capable to solve
quickly and understand existing process and operational
problems, and improve the technology efficiency, create new
products, apply new methods and approaches, developing in this
way the production and the industry in general [2].
In this situation, universities get involved into the competitive
struggle of metallurgical companies. In this context, universities
have to compete with each other not only for the best applicants
and students, but also in the area of development of new
educational programmes and educational technologies providing
training for ‘new’ specialists working on the frontier of
knowledge in metallurgy and contributing to technology
breakthroughs of iron and steel companies. Such educational
programmes, certainly, shall be unique, exclusive, and shall
differ from the principles of mass training at universities.
2 Task Setting, Problems
Before talking about design of new educational programmes for
the iron and steel industry, it is required to summarize the
existing models of engineering personnel training at universities.
Modern universities having 5,000 to 10,000 students and more
are forced to be involved into education massification under
optimisation of the resources. When such model is used, an
educational programme has a certain “base” and a variable part
that determines the educational profile and specialization of a
graduating student. The massification model is explained on Fig.
1 in more details.
One cannot deny that when such model is implemented
universities are seeking to keep up with the time as much as
possible, develop their own, and implement existing, frontier
educational technologies, which will replace traditional
education formats in the nearest future. They are global
educational internet-platforms, on-line trainings, different
simulators, etc. Availability of internet resources is currently one
of the main modules for developing programmes of mass
engineering personnel training.
Fig. 1. The Model of Mass Implementation of Engineering
Personnel Training
Due to development of information technologies, the amount of
information is so large that the present knowledge could not be
placed into textbooks and is becoming out-of-date. It should be
mentioned that the portion of implementation of educational
programmes due to the use of internet resources will only grow
and will achieve 30 to 40% of the total volume of credits, and
these technologies are used for implementation of the following
two modules.
The next module is so-called the general engineering module
named STEM: Science means science basic knowledge
(philosophy and history, philology, mathematics and physics,
chemistry, economics), Technology means existing technologies
in engineering (application of basic knowledge in existing
technologies of different industries); Engineering means basic
principles of computer-aided design and simulations, basic
knowledge of CAD and CAE systems; Math means applied
mathematics and informatics.
The third module of an educational programme in the context of
mass implementation of the educational process of engineering
personnel trainings is so-called the variable module, where the
profile and specialization of a future engineer is formed, and
elective courses are implemented. In this module, higher
education institutes and their departments and sub-departments
can implement original courses based on implementation of own
research, and an educational process in this module can consider
the regional component of university positioning.
Therefore, the content and specific character of this module
reflects original exclusive features of each university within
educational courses built on the results of own scientific studies,
availability of unique specialists-experts as instructors, and
particularities of the regional industry. The portion of this
module shall be at least 30% of the total volume of an
educational programme.
It should be understood that within the model represented above
it is very difficult and sometime impossible to train a specialist
capable of solving actual production tasks at the expert-
analytical level, capable of conducting scientific research
independently, designing a technology and creating new
products for the iron and steel industry, contributing to the
development of an iron and steel company in this way.
Therefore, new approaches and understanding are required for
design of engineering educational programmes.
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