AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
3 Description of the Process of Development of the
Engineering Personnel Training Model
Provided that training of ‘a unique specialist’ shall be based on
certain training, the process of designing of an educational
programme for training of master-level students for the iron and
steel industry is reviewed as an example. Before we have
considered the model of training of a specialist as a person
working inside the profession, and now the attention will be
given to the modelling of the process of training of ‘a
professional’ as a person developing the industry.
Before starting to design an educational programme, it is
required, as banal as it may sound, to set goals, to answer the
question about a purpose of this educational programme: what
product will be received as a result, what ‘should happen’ after
mastering the educational programme, what effect will be
received after solving the considered problems, how the
condition of the existing system will be changed. For example, a
metallurgical company needs specialists in the area of predictive
and statistical analysis, or computer modelling of cold rolling, or
automation of a process technology, or in general, a combination
of these skills.
When developing a new educational programme, it is necessary
to consider specific aspects and a unique nature of a university in
this field, there should be a concept of new proposals on its
content and forms of educational process organisation. It is
logical to analyse how other universities implement similar
programmes now, whether they did it before, and what results
were achieved.
Students must not be viewed as young and inexperienced for
such training. These educational programmes are entered by
quite mature people who usually already have production
experience, know the technology and equipment of metallurgical
productions and who have faced certain technological problems.
It also should be taken into account that in the modern world
every person seeks to make himself or herself within ‘his or her
unique trajectory’, and, respectively, an educational route [4].
So, how can a student find his or her unique route and,
respectively, control his or her education? There should be a
general principle or a common ground, on which many
educational formats can be combined and the results of
experiments in education can be captured. This general principle
is a competence as an ability to follow a certain type of actions
in a certain professional and social context.
The following types of competences are distinguished in training
of professional engineering personnel:
Narrow specialized competences (knowledge of
technologies and equipment of cold and/or hot rolling of
flat products, grasp of calculation methods, operation of
automated control systems, mill speed mode control, steel
cooling, etc.)
Over-professional competences, such as an ability to come
up with new possibilities and identify them (development
of control system operation algorithms, programming, big
data analysis)
Competences characterizing a universal class of activities,
which, as some people think, are personal characteristics, a
personality of a specialist and a student, but which also can be
developed during an educational process. These competences
are also called existential, for example, leadership skills,
teamwork, public speaking skills, etc. [5, 6].
To a large extent, a competence is not a perfect concept. Some
difficulties with competence description also exist. However, a
competence-based language of description of education results is
convenient for an employer and clear to the labour market, as it
is easy to evaluate narrow competences. Outlook studies in this
field represent a specialist competence model formed through
big data analysis in the system of a metallurgical enterprise.
When designing educational programmes of professionals
training, the following formats are usually taken as the key ones:
Designing of educational programmes together with
business. In this case an employer is not a sponsor, but a
task provider. And in this case there is a risk of being
dependent on a certain employer; therefore, game formats,
creation and study of models and analysis of cases are used
An educational programme is created on the basis of
practical skills, and knowledge plays a secondary role
In the educational programme, a student gets into a
professional community of experts through
practice/internship in the actual production environment
Work in teams of students where they teach each other
In the training process, students implement projects within
selection of gaols and means for solving tasks of research
and applied nature [7].
In any case, an educational programme of professional
engineering personnel training in its content represents research
and development projects and creation of technologies.
The suggested model of design of educational training is based
on the world known approach of an educational programme
structure named MAJOR-MINOR with additions and corrections
[8].
In contrast to the traditional approach to the MAJOR module
formation as the fundamental or general engineering training,
introducing a student to a special filed, it is suggested to
immerse master-level students into issues of metallurgical
production, studying of global scientific problems in the
considered industry, receiving skills of formulation of new
hypotheses, problems setting, organization and conduction of
pilot studies, acquiring skills of applied mathematics and
informatics using up-to-date software packages. It is also
necessary to analyse the existing methods and approaches to
solving tasks for the iron and steel industry in order to develop
the new ones. It is clear that new results cannot be received by
old methods.
The result of student education at this module should be the skill
to ‘ask questions rather than the ability to answer them’.
The MAJOR model can be called ‘the problematics module’ in
the represented concept of the educational programme design.
In turn, the MINOR block is focused on development of over-
professional and narrow competences of a specialist in the area
of metallurgy.
This block consists of two parts:
1. MINOR Professional Project (an intersdisciplinary module of
team eduction of students). At this module, a student is not
taught to individual special disciplines, but is immersed into
implementation of actual research tasks in the interdisciplinary
field. Therefore, the student training shall result in solving
industrial problems or research tasks. The theme of tasks to be
solved can be determined by business, or by a university, or by a
student himself. This module shall be designed in such a manner
that it would be of the same volume in credits and it should start
and end at the same calendar period at several engineering
educational programmes for training specialists in partner areas
for the iron and steel industry (power, automation and IT, and
equipment). It will allow for the formation of student teams
during an educational process, who will deal with scientific
studies, applications and engineering. Within this module, a
student, on his or her own, can also get an internship in R&D
structures of iron and steel companies. A key moment in this
module is not a studied subject/discipline, but a topic. The
required specialist is formed at the module. This module is a
‘formation’ module.
2. MINOR The Module of Multi-Professional Competencies
Development. In the contrast to the module described above, this
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