Signing the Bologna Agreement in 1999, Russia entered a new phase in the reformation of the education system. Due to globalization the following objective was developed: to create an integrated extent European education system. «An incorporated association in the education system is an essential part of the cooperation community, united in different regional organizations to achieve the goals in economic integration, social unity and political security» (HSE, 2005).
According to the national policy in the higher education system, it is critical for an engineer to be capable of adapting to variable living conditions, analyzing situations, evaluating and finding solutions to initial problems, possessing communication skills and developing intercultural relations (Sorokovikh, 2004). This would make it possible for the future engineer to tackle professional problems not only in the native language, but also in the foreign language (in our case in English).
Under conditions of educational globalization, many Russian universities develop and implement modern multilevel educational programs, covering both a good command of the foreign language and professional-oriented communication and suggest improvement of computing base.
Development of computer technologies and telecommunication means of search, handling and information exchange radically influences the content and ways of organizing future professional activity of engineers. Computer-mediated communication (including the foreign language) is highly demanded in the society, which requires the skills of competent oral and written speech, self-presentation, an effective deal with different information and critical evaluation of information recourses (Evdokimova, 2004).
Information community formation results in the development of the computer environment of business, scientific and everyday communication. According to this, when formulating objectives of training technical specialists, it is necessary to take into account changes in the professional field peculiarities in computerization conditions. Besides, in the communication engineer training the emphasis is often placed on special features of communication by means of educational computing.
Newly designed courses application in engineering professional-communicative teaching as an integrated part of the engineers´ curriculum enhances implementation of such educational programs, which suggest application of combination of teaching programs based on the ideas of computer software training with other means of teaching. Information-communication technologies are connected with television, computers, projectors or text-, audio-, television- and computer environments.
One of the computing technologies fulfilled in practice is an interactive board. It successfully combines possibilities of projective technologies and a sophisticated touch-sensitive device, which allows not simply displaying information, but also operating the process, i.e. adjust and correct the data, make notes and remarks. Thus, the following major facilities are realized in the interactive board: slide show, audio- and video-information representation, text and image edit and display, the Internet connection, teleconference, etc.
Consequently, original engineering problems, encouraging creation of professional-communicative situations and meeting the current engineering demands to develop their communicative skills, win new bright and vivid sides. The educational program acquires a new language-teaching approach, which stimulates language motivation of future engineers, their creativity and independence.
Thus, application of computer technology as an integrated part of engineering curricula reinforces the introduction of a new curriculum course. Engineering problems and situations can be challenging in designing professional-communicative situations and meet the needs of engineering students in the development of their communication skills.
The Bologna Agreement encouraged dynamic development of the new education programs for intercultural professional-oriented communication with application of computer technology, which raise highly qualified Russian engineers who can communicate effectively in a multicultural professional world and growing global marketplace.
The work was submitted to international scientific conference «Problems and experience in implementing the Bologna Accords», Budva, Montenegro, June 17-24, 2009. Came to the editorial office оn 12.05.2009