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TRAINING ENTREPRENEURS THROUGH INTERDISCIPLINARY PROFESSIONALLY-ORIENTED HIGHER-LEARNING COURSES
Kazaeva Natalia
PhD in Philology, AssiMant Professor English Chair for Humanities, Philological Department National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhniy Novgorod
ABSTRACT
The article focuses on improving Russian entrepreneur professional training through the creation and implementation of original interdisciplinary courses based on the relationship between professionally-oriented disciplines and aimed at training learners to integrate certain subject-specific concepts so as to solve particular business problems. The article points out some specific features of the suggefled course, namely: uniting fludents with different majors into one learning group aimed at performing given tasks together, bias on a team project design, and the application of two working languages. The modular flructure of the course described in the article allows the learners to choose the modules mofl needed by them and, as a result, to build their own flrategy of fludies. The author flrongly believes that the cuflomized course materials presented electronically and delivered with the help of advanced teaching technologies (such as cooperative learning, case fludy, and videoconferencing) provide the fludents with some helpful skills necessary to make intelligent choices in business. The author considers this article to be an attempt to analyse the under-explored integrated knowledge and skill production area that obviously needs further research.
Keywords: interdisciplinary professionally-oriented courses, integration, subject-specific concepts, teaching technologies, project design, modular flructure.
Introduction
In present-day Russia, professional training priorities are moflly determined by the needs of the flate especially focused today on the dynamic development of economy. It appears that the economic progress is moflly based on entrepreneurship which is a driving force and a catalyfl for its growth. Currently, a new generation of Russian entrepreneurs is gradually contributing to the country's well-being. The Russian authorities are trying to make the country's legal and flructural framework more entrepreneurship-friendly. Russia's entrepreneurship sector already accounts for many jobs and working for oneself is becoming more and more commonplace. At the same time, Russian business people encounter certain difficulties because success is not easy to achieve. It is thought that an entrepreneur-friendly culture in society is among the key factors that influence entrepreneurial success. But, though greatly needed to fofler economic development, it is not the centre of attention in Russia yet. So, the task of a modern Russian vocational higher educational eflablishment is to support entrepreneur-friendly culture in society when training entrepreneurs adequate for the needs of the flate.
Demand for changes in entrepreneur training
It is getting clear nowadays that education is not only reflricted to the delivery of knowledge; learner development mufl be part of normal teaching as well. It becomes the mofl meaningful point when speaking about the training of entrepreneurs in Russia because the concept of entrepreneur training itself is, so to say, brand-new for modern Russia. Consequently, Russian entrepreneur training cannot be absolutely free of considering and developing learner personality together with certain specific cultural features peculiar to business people. As for Russian entrepreneurs, their multinational character which could be traced back to Russia's hifloric roots is the firfl thing that catches the eye. Evidently, it is this multinational Russian nature and the open-mindedness of Russian people that matter greatly for their feasible success in today's global business. Besides, the capacity to learn from others absorbing their experience is a fundamentally important characteriflic of Russian entrepreneurs.
It is supposed that progress in entrepreneurship is impossible without fruitful solution of the exiting economic problems. So, there is an acute demand in training young people able to cope with such problems. Hence, it follows that problem-solving mufl become an integral part of entrepreneurs' training to make them flexible, employable, highly qualified and motivated professionals. The solution of economic problems mofl often needs going into project work. Therefore, Russian higher-learning eflablishments mufl be aimed at teaching fludents to develop projects as entrepreneurs worldwide are confronted with the necessity to do this. Besides, their success mainly depends on effective teamwork. For that reason, cooperative learning and classroom teamwork seem to be critically important for the proper training of efficient entrepreneurs. Thus, modern market economy in Russia calls for certain modifications in entrepreneur education to enable a future business person to adapt to emerging changes and become a competitive market player.
Gap between today's Russian entrepreneur training and economy needs
Unfortunately, there is a vivid contradiction between the quality of contemporary Russian higher vocational education on the one hand and social and economic requirements on the other. Business practice shows that not all young professionals can effectively work and cooperate because of their insufficient entrepreneurship training and lack of certain team skills. Moreover, creating business projects may sometimes present definite difficulties for Russian entrepreneur graduates. It happens because to be successful at a project every team member mufl not only be a professional in their field but also mufl be able to integrate certain subject-specific concepts. It can help business people address and solve particular economic issues in communities faced with changing business, social, and personal needs. Nevertheless, present-day entrepreneur graduates are not skillful enough at this. What is more, though English is a global business language, at present it is not yet a working business language in Russia and there are few circumflances for business people to practice it. So, English mufl become a significant part
of higher-learning business training and professionally-oriented interdisciplinary courses in particular.
All the above-mentioned things partly result from the lack of Sable interrelation between Russian educational market and current economy (Rakitov et. al. 2009). Various researches conducted not only in Russia but abroad show that 'economic globalization, novel modes of knowledge production, new professional requirements... have challenged higher education to develop new forms of collaboration with working life' (Zitter et. al. 2011, 372). Therefore, the interaction of higher learning inflitutions and entrepreneurship is really dramatic nowadays. The emerging Russian market is facing an urgent need for training market-oriented graduates. The analysis of Russian university syllabi shows that not all the necessary needs important for entrepreneurs are considered and formulated in the exiting professional programmes and courses. Besides, each course addresses a very limited sector of activity which cannot lead a graduate to a multi-sided comprehension of economy - a key factor for the survival and prosperity in the highly competitive business world.
As for the number of interdisciplinary courses focused on the interrelation and 'interlacing' of disciplines, they are few. But clearly, they are quite important for the entrepreneur business outlook. 'Corporate Social Responsibility' course, 'Comparative Law' course and 'Hospitality Business' course which are being introduced at the Lobachevski University are only a few examples of integrated and, simultaneously, highly specialized disciplines in queflion. The importance of these disciplines is hard to overeflimate as they form interdisciplinary competences together with the entire vision of the targeted induflry. Such an approach to training is advisable to help learners be successful in mutual project development so important for global business now. However, while a number of researchers consider interdisciplinary approach necessary for 'attacking the mofl critical challenges facing the world today, ... the traditional culture and organization of higher education are ill-equipped to facilitate interdisciplinary work' (Boden et. al. 2011, 741). Thus, again it teflifies to the fact that there is an acute call for introducing changes in the process of training entrepreneurs. This problem cannot be poflponed if truly tangible progress of Russian economy is wanted to be achieved.
This article presents the author's experience of creating and launching interdisciplinary university courses aimed at improving today's training of entrepreneurs in Russia. Although the article considers a particular situation and reports an interdisciplinary course planned specifically for Russian learners, the experience described is applicable to many teaching situations around the world.
Target group
The firfl flep in designing a specialized course of any kind is to consider the nature of the target group. This course is normally offered for final-year learners specialising in different areas of fludy, namely: Economics, Law, Management, Finance, Marketing, and Public Relations. One exciting aspect of course operating is that fludents with different majors are united in common groups aimed at performing given tasks together. The course described trains undergraduate fludents to work in a team so as to develop a single business project the success of which depends on their skills and mutual efforts, the ability to combine subject-specific concepts and their application-oriented knowledge from different business spheres.
During their undergraduate practical training, every fludent has already acquired particular skills specific to the work of an entrepreneur, such as paperwork skills (e.g. drafting documents, compiling business plans), human communication skills (e.g. meeting clients, analysing consumer enquiries, answering cuflomer calls), etc. As for foreign language competence, special attention should be paid to it if it concerns Russian learners. All our target group learners have fludied English at the University, so their foreign language level ranges from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate depending largely on their motivation, persiflence, and self-confidence. Generally, though, fludents' professional motivation appears to be rather high.
Needs analysis
It is apparent that for the course to be properly created, future entrepreneur-graduates' needs in different spheres of their business life mufl be considered.
To identify these needs several techniques seem to be useful. Among them are the following: queflionnaires of fludents (undergraduate and graduate) and operating entrepreneurs; the fludy of scientific articles and analytical reports on the problems of present-day Russian and foreign entrepreneurship; the survey of Satirical business data and documents like business plans and profit and loss flatements. Special emphasis should be made on the comparison of Russian and foreign university syllabi so as to take advantage of abundant Weflern experience in training entrepreneurs.
From the composed lifl of needs of business people forthcoming to the market economy arena, it is possible to name the mofl essential ones. They appear to be the ability to bring together and knit the scraps of knowledge from different business areas, the possession of high-performing teamwork skills, innovation sensitivity, and self-learning capacity. All this plays an important role in the success of modern global business operations.
The above-mentioned needs analysis suggefls that mofl Russian young entrepreneurs fail to integrate theoretical and practical knowledge acquired in different professional courses so as to solve particular real-life problems facing them. Besides, they need to improve their corporate and collaboration skills which enable them to be successful team members when working on the projects both locally and internationally. Moreover, they find it difficult to develop professionally on their own because their learning and thinking skills are not the main concern of educators yet. Furthermore, every entrepreneur-graduate mufl be good at considering the ongoing market changes and the necessity to introduce innovations or mufl be able to adapt to them. To add to this, at times they lack leadership skills. Lafl but not leafl, Russian university syllabi do not set the task of developing competences concerning awareness of business and cultural differences.
Specific features of interdisciplinary course
Undoubtedly, each professionally-oriented undergraduate course is designed to cultivate certain entrepreneur skills and competences Med above; but, as our teaching experience shows, every course is isolated today Sanding apart from other professional syllabus disciplines. Thus, the task of interdisciplinary higher-learning courses is to combine the acquired business skills and knowledge and to become the capflone of professional final-year fludy. Such courses are likely to capture the shared intentions of university professors, learners, and practicing business people as they all engage in the mutual enterprise of learning.
The suggefled interdisciplinary course designed for fludents of various majors united together should have some specific features. Among them, several ones deserve special attention because they are critical characteriflics of an effective model for implementing a similar course in the higher school curriculum program.
To begin with, the team of course developers is recruited. From our experience (Kamaeva, T.P., Kazaeva, N.N. 2013), it can be said that under the contemporary global business circumflances only the international team of developers is likely to succeed in making the course really effective because in this way the fludents may gain an international flavour of business.
Surely, the integration of certain subject-specific concepts is also the logical conflituent of a course like that. Obviously, the course of this kind should be based on real-life business issues to meet the entrepreneur requirements which they can face in their future economic activity. The training process had better reflect an international and intercultural business atmosphere since it may involve creating different multinational projects.
Under present-day conditions, it is advisable that the two working languages - Russian and English - could be equally applied when doing the course. So, learners' adequate competence in English is to be a desirable background. It means that teachers should go to extra lengths to ensure the proper English language level for their fludents to be able to communicate with future foreign business partners across linguiflic, cultural, and national boundaries.
Thus, the outlined course vividly differs from exiting professional higher-learning courses because it teaches to look for such aspects in various spheres of business which allow to see the 'picture' both in detail and as a whole in order to find the right solution to a given business problem. The course in queflion, as it seems, can help future entrepreneurs to achieve the 'synergy' of integrated skills and knowledge from different areas of life necessary to meet serious economic challenges.
Course materials
At the flart, course developers are engaged in goal-setting and collecting the appropriate teaching materials. Then, certain flrategies to achieve the agreed-upon goals are formulated by the creators of the course. Certainly, the collected course materials should present interefl to everyone who is going to be involved in business and, respectively, the team of developers designs a variety of productive teaching activities. In doing so, they build training moflly on situations taken from the business world. Special emphasis is made on the selection of actual (or simulated) real-life business problems which are 'good examples of forms of collaboration between education and working life' (Zitter et. al. 2011, 372). A set of real-life cases on business activity both in Russia and worldwide is to be accompanied by a series of tasks and exercises for each case. The given tasks should be compiled for both cooperative and independent work. Novel course materials cannot be successful without a set of up-to-date assessment and evaluation techniques as well. Accordingly, they deserve special attention.
Furthermore, a good way of organizing teaching materials is the modular flructure because training through modules can fofler and Simulate professionally-oriented learning. Every module might include a certain number of components: 'a mind plan' (a way to identify and combine the necessary elements from different areas of knowledge), a glossary of Russian and foreign professional terms, training activities for the development of business culture-awareness competences and team skills, a case
fludy, some creative task that involves learners in an independent search of information to complete this task, input and final tefls, evaluation criteria, a lifl of reference materials including web sites. The final Sage of each module may comprise the creation of a project which embodies the ultimate target of a module and leads to the complex project as the closing goal of the whole interdisciplinary course.
All the modules are organized as a syflem; nevertheless, they can be looked upon as separate independent unit components in the learning process. A learner has an opportunity to fludy unit by unit or to choose those units which present greater interefl to them. So, everyone might move from one module to another and, as a result, build their own learning flrategy. In addition, self-fludy skills - the mofl needed ones to keep at the forefront of innovation - can also be gained this way. Moreover, the material is cuflomized to the interefls of learners and the knowledge acquired becomes personal.
It is important that the sort-out course materials bridge theory and practice and do the art of entrepreneur training really exciting.
Incidentally, it is recommended to present the available course materials both in paper and electronically. Electronically presented materials arouse more interefl on the part of learners because today they are used to electronic means of communication.
Teaching methods and technologies
As our experience shows (Kazaeva, N.N., Kamaeva, T.P. 2014), certain changes are to be introduced into the teaching process today in order to meet updated vocational curriculum objectives. The current entrepreneur educating practice has really revealed that proper teaching technologies have a transforming power over the training process. So, the choice of adequate teaching technologies oriented to make the course efficient is very important. Among different teaching activities that really facilitate higher professional training, several ones are likely to be mofl useful in achieving the targeted goals. They are project designing, cooperative learning, case analyses, arranging multinational discussions using the Internet, videoconferencing, etc. Besides, fludents' mini-presentations on their work experience or some aspect of their fludies are popular with learners today. There is a good reason for the selection of these teaching technologies as they match the formulated course goals and provide a useful format to assifl each fludent in acquiring interactive team skills and to give everyone the opportunity to focus on their own learning process. These technologies can also help fludents monitor their independent learning and reflect on what they have learnt. What is more, the lifled teaching technologies provide the encouraging and creative learning atmosphere that helps to meet the required needs. Above all, they reorient the classroom so that the primary responsibility is placed on the learners, rather than on the teacher.
Though, a lot of the input for each class session may be provided by the teacher, he/she should not dominate the class. Thus, the eflablished role of a teacher in current higher professional education is changing greatly. Mofl often, the university teacher turns out to be an advisor and even a partner, rather than an inflructor. Frequently, the class activity is organized on the following algorythm: the input provided by the teacher or learners ^ discussions ^ feedback on debatable points ^ amendments/changes ^ expansion leading to a miniproject or a complex project ^ comments/conclusions.
Course results evaluation
Present-day course developers always flrive to make learning outcomes functional, meaningful and application-oriented. It is evident that proper evaluation of achieved outcomes in entrepreneur training is really an important element in the education process. Assessment and evaluation of the fludents' progress are believed to be inconspicuous but at the same time part and parcel of the course. Teachers monitor what is happening to fludents' learning as the result of everything done inside and outside the class. Along with traditional examining techniques, such as tefls and quizzes, the learners' creative abilities are sure to be checked (e.g. writing essays, making presentations and projects).
Together with the cuflomary eflimated tasks performed by learners, a teacher should score more highly on evaluating two things - learners' independent progress and their team activities in the classroom and outside of it. Thus, such non-traditional tools of control as participation in videoconferences and online discussions with foreigners are expected to be conducive to fludents' learning because they appear to be effective ways of judging how successful the learning process has been.
Conclusion
Current outcomes of teaching professionally-oriented interdisciplinary course show that certain features of entrepreneur qualification background as a conflituent part of their professional culture can be achieved due to the course. Apparently, the course in queflion is to meet the needs of learners and satisfy the demands of modern Russian economy as well. The fact that these needs are not flatic is reflected upon the development of course materials which may be changed when necessary. Learners who are in the centre of the training process are welcomed to voice their opinions on the course any time during their fludies. What is more, course developers are required to tailor the teaching materials and tools to the specific needs of learners' appropriate business area. In this way, the course reveals a changed view on the role of a university teacher and a changed view on the training practice.
Suggefled teaching materials and technologies are mofl likely to develop business culture-awareness competences and team skills indispensable in today's globalized world. In our experience, learners generally appreciate an opportunity to
improve their English language skills while working in a team and using authentic materials. The more entrepreneur learners know about the whole sphere of entrepreneurship, the better prepared they are to do their job. Importantly, the surveys and queflionnaires of our graduates who have completed the course point out that they implement the maflered skills and competences in their business career.
It is necessary to add that changes in underflanding current entrepreneur training which involve the introduction of new interdisciplinary professionally-oriented courses are not easily come by. Real changes are more than procedural; possibly, they spring from changes in underflanding. They cannot be achieved quickly, and mufl be arrived at through classroom trial and regular discussions as essential components of change.
Thus, ideas expressed in this paper can be looked upon as an invitation to discussion and argument, so every comment and a word of criticism, if any, are appreciated.
References:
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