Besides that, actual needs and requirements of the market of educational services make high school, on the one hand, follow the requirements of customer-oriented principle, offer new educational products in form of programs for intensive learning, distant courses, special products in the form of on-line resources, presentations, summaries, abstracts, supplementary materials of some topics and issues for self-learning by students, advisory services, combined and additional courses. On the other hand, high school should not only consider issues in sphere of education but also refer to the actual needs of industry and business and take them as a possible way of implementing its new products and getting orders for its further development. Adoption and financing of Federal Programs and also analytical program «Development of the scientific potential of High School (2006-2008)» give important contribution to that. Practical realization of such projects is impossible without scientific and methodological assistance of scientific and research institutional organizations and intellectual potential of high school.
Thus, in modern educational situation high school is oriented on different markets that mean one more aspect of consideration- the market one. The same idea is relevant to the scientific activities of high school. Work on the commercialization of technologies leads to different types of scientific products based on some scientific trend and accordingly to different ways of grouping scientists into spin off companies, creative theoretical groups, working research teams, groups on training school leavers, whose work does not necessarily follow the standards of the university courses. So, keeping to the traditional functional hierarchy of university departmentalization, serving «traditional» academic process, a lot of additional structures have been forming spontaneously in high school and help to realize the increasing number of new products of university activities. These structures do not correspond to the hierarchy of vertical functional departmentalization because they are horizontal schemes, combining the stuff of traditional subdivisions.
Nowadays the concept and educational technologies of training specialists have been changing completely. In their professional environment they have to solve complicated tasks, acting in the situation of uncertainty. In process of academic learning students should be focused on continuous professional and personal self-improvement, transformation the personality for solving more sophisticated creative tasks of any professional activity.
Our modern economic life defines new innovative ideas required by the society and the acute need in innovative and active specialists with university degrees. We consider innovative activity as an inseparable characteristic of a specialist with university degree. So the main purpose of any higher educational establishment is bringing up innovative and active personality, ready for effective functioning in modern economic conditions and having new ideas and approaches for professional and social problem solving.
Having analyzed the theoretical approaches described in the scientific and pedagogical literature and models of modern academic practices on acquiring students the experience of innovative activity in process of professional training; we have come to a conclusion that today we do not have effective mechanisms for exposure innovative students and using the potential of student´s creative groups. Traditionally problems of forming student´s creative activity are interpreted in context of simulated situations which the students might face up with and their involvement into collective research practice by using given knowledge in the mode of quazi-professional activities imitating essential and technological aspects of their future profession. Problems concerning organizational conditions for bringing up innovative and active personality in the educational environment of high school have not been theoretically worked out. Today there is a necessity of designing methodological, social, psychological and institutional principles on using personal potential, personal development and bringing up of innovative specialists in higher educational establishment.
The conceptual approach to the problem of increasing innovative activities of students in high school designed while working on the research project « Cluster application as methodological principle of stimulating innovative activity of students» and analytical program « Development of scientific potential of high school (2006-2008) » supposes complex measures on forming innovative and active student groups effectively cooperating for creative solving of technical business orders. One of the components of this system is the creation of new institutional structures.
The functions of this structure include:
- realization of combined organizational methods and procedures, necessary for creation innovative and active environment in higher educational establishment,
- designing the optimal strategy of stimulating innovative activity of every participant of educational process, mostly students,
- monitoring all tendencies and regulating the whole activity on the creation of innovative educational environment of higher educational establishment.
The main tasks of this organizational structure include:
- identification and dissemination of innovations that academic workers actively apply in their practical activities,
- organization of purposeful people activity, cooperating for the realization of innovative idea, implementing it and getting economic profits,
- commercialization of the results and solutions on the base of economic potential of the idea,
- optimization of educational process in high school by applying principally new scientific, methodological, managerial, organizational and other decisions,
- creation of cross disciplinary and interdepartmental subdivisions which would appear as the decision-making centers for the realization of innovative ideas on certain problems,
- mobilization of various high school resources for realization of innovations in sphere of educational activity,
- specialist training on resources mobilization for effective implementation of innovative process in high school.
Functioning of this institutional structure should promote complex development of all subdivisions in high school providing commercialization of the results of innovative activity, bringing up and positioning leaders who are able to initiate and manage innovations, organizing highly qualified specialist teams to work in sphere of innovation.
According to the modern requirements one of the main tasks of effective functioning of the described structure is training consultants on mobilization resources for implementing innovative activities in every sphere. In foreign terminology they are called «innovative consultant» or «catalyst». The number of these consultants is the criteria of innovative activity of not only a certain organization but also a country.
The most valuable part of consultants´ activity is their assistance in increasing innovation potential, which is the ability to percept and effectively use innovations, to create problem-oriented expertise systems aimed at modeling future specialists behavior in innovation decision-making, to prepare intensive technologies for innovation design. Interrelated contacts and behavioral patterns within innovation groups become its inner content in process of professional growth. Specific self organization that accompanies the process of group cooperation becomes the «mechanism» of forming personal educational environment of each group member where he acts as a subject of his personal development and at the same time as the agent of innovation in modern high school.
The article is admitted to the International Scientific Conference " New educational technologies and principles of the educational process organization "; Rome, Florence-Venice, 2007, March 10-17;. came to the editorial office on 12.02.07