Scientific journal
European Journal of Natural History
ISSN 2073-4972
ИФ РИНЦ = 0,301

ORGANIZATION CULTURE OF DISTRIBUTED EDUCATION PROJECT IN PERSONALITY’S MENTAL SPACE DEVELOPMENT

Boychenko G.N., Gurevich L.I., Kundozerova L.I.

The surging dynamics of educational processes´ globalization and integration, determined by the intense introduction of the latest information and telecommunication technologies, conditions the necessity of working out of innovative pedagogical models and open education concept distribution systems with due consideration of personality development priorities in the period of knowledge society becoming. The present-day cyberspace as a global information field and new universal bio-electronic people´s life environment, the most important component of which is the Internet, appears one of the key developments of the existing educational paradigm transformations. In the given context a special topicality is acquired by the problem of working out of the distributed education project´s life cycle management strategy methodological foundations as a flexible dynamic heterogeneous open pedagogical system of the interaction organization on the basis of state-of-the-art technologies, the Internet means and services in the development of the personality mental space.

From the system approach viewpoint the distributed education project and the process of its implementation are a complex metasystem, wherein the project itself appears as a controlled system and the project management is a controlling system. The distributed education projects´ management - is the methodology of organization, planning, guidance, resources coordination through the project´s life cycle for didactic purposes achievement using modern methods and means of Internet-technologies. The development of the projects control methods from the network planning technology to system management of functions and subsets of the project have allowed actualizing the distributed education project´s didactic potential in the process of personal- and social-professional becoming of the learner. The projects, wherein the learner should successfully perform various roles and functions, are small or medium in their scale, short-term or medium-term - in their lead time, innovative - in their type, opening new opportunities of the open education quality improvement for the preparation to successful activity in conditions of the formation of a new society characterized as a "networking", "informational", "competent" one - in their goal orientation.

A virtual office of the distributed education project provides a complex use of modern pedagogical, informative, communicative and managerial technologies for the integration of educational, professional and social media of the project´s functioning, that promotes the formation and development of mentality of the personality as a hierarchically higher stage of its becoming [2]. A virtual office of the distributed education project represents a network of individual and collective actors - freely interacting intelligent agents developing the joint project [1]. The core of the project´s virtual office is the project´s knowledge base management informative-technological system, which includes the following components: a centralized bank of artifacts created at separate stages of the project implementation; records fixing the knowledge and experience accumulated in the course of the project´s implementation, which are easy to study and use; an endurance integrated pool with the tuned system of classification and the project´s participants´ access rights control.

The distributed education project needs to be regarded as a cycle of innovative activity, wherein a special importance is acquired by organization culture values exercising a significant influence on the personality´s and the project´s team mental space formation and development with an integrated system of mental values, norms and rules of conduct determined by the common purpose availability [4; 5]. The conjoint-creative activity of the project´s participants promotes development of the project-technological type organization culture [3], wherein the values are: the team´s mission and the project vision; common purposes and solidarity of the team in their achievement; knowledge and competences of the team members; the floating role of the leader and readiness to obey acknowledging the power of those, whose knowledge and competences are important for the achievement of the project´s key marks. As an instrument of cooperation of the distributed education project participants making actual the search and knowledge transfer in the process of its realization, and also a free idea exchange (thread discussions", connected with projects, documents, tasks; "meetings in the net"; coordinated "work floods") within and between the levels of the team´s organization hierarchy, synchronous and asynchronous means of the Internet communications, personal and group informative managers of the project´s virtual office are used.

In the distributed education project two tasks are solved: objective models of the principal and secondary business processes of a virtual educational institution (school, HEI) are created and the triad of "project - technology - reflection" competences is accustomed [3]; both results of this project are the organization culture values of the personality and the team. The distributed education project life cycle leading management strategy is a purposeful formation and development of the Internet-mentality - steady core foundations of information and world perception, world outlook and human behavior, which give the personality the properties of uniqueness and the ability of self-actualization in the virtual world by means of mastering and creating the organization culture knowledge society values [6].

During the distributed education project´s life cycle the team´s organization culture development takes course of several stages [7; 8] according to the achieved maturity level of the project management process:

  • the initial level - the organization "power culture" dominates; in conditions of the team formation success depends on individual efforts and peculiarities of the person initiated the project; the unitary mental space of the distributed education project team is lacking;
  • the repeated level - the transfer from the "power culture" to the "role culture"; the participants of the project acquire the competence updating experience which is reproduced in new projects; the "mutual discovery" and cognition of individual mentalities´ unique features;
  • the definite level - is characterized by the organization "task culture"; the process stops depending on individual merits of separate participants and cannot devolve at a lower level; the mutual enrichment and convergence of the team members´ individual mental spaces begin;
  • the controlled level - allows transferring to the organization "personality culture", taking the team members´ interaction at the cooperation level in the unitary project´s mental space as detailed quantitative indexes are established for the development process and product quality and the process of work on the project, and the project results - are understood and controlled;
  • the optimizing level - a self-training and self-developing team continues intense improving of the process on the basis of the current results analysis and innovative ideas and technologies application; a transfer to the organization "personality and task culture" is reached; the total mental space of the project determines the leading orientation of individual mentalities´ transformation in accord with the prior values of organization culture.

Thus, the task-oriented formation of the distributed education project team´s total mental space promoting the development of an individual mental space of a personality is defined by the following factors: the informative interaction of individual and collective actors between each other and with the informative-technological artifacts created during the project´s life cycle; the convergence processes and cross-enrichment of the project participants´ individual mentalities; the innovative intelligent Internet-technologies applied as didactic instruments of th eproject´s monitoring.

References:

  1. Boichenko G.N., Gurevich L.I., Kundozerova L.I. Development of Distributed Education Project´s Virtual Space // XVII International Conference-Exhibition "Information Technologies in Education" ("PTS-2007"). http://ito.edu.ru/2007/Moscow/III/1/III-1-7101.html
  2. Gershunsky B.S. Educational-Pedagogical prognostics. Theory, Methodology, Practice. - M.: Flinta: Nauka, 2003. - p. 768.
  3. Novikov A.M., Novikov D.A. Education Project (Methodology of Educational Activity). M.: "Egves", 2004. - p. 120.
  4. Kholodnaya M.A. Intellect Psychology. Investigation Paradoxes. - II Edition - SPb.: Peter, 2002. - p.272.
  5. Shadrikov B.D. Human Mental Development. - M.: Aspect Press, 2007. - p. 284.
  6. Shein E. Organization Culture and Leadership. III Edition / Translation from English under the reduction of Kovalyova T.Yu. - SPb.: Peter, 2007. - p. 336.
  7. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) - Third Edition, Paperback. Project Management Institute, 2004. p. 388.
  8. HandyC.B. Understanding Organizations. Fourth Edition. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1993. p. 448.

The work is submitted to III Scientific Conference "The Problems of International Integration of Educational Standards", Czechia (Prague) - Luxembourg - France (Paris), April, 20-27, 2008. Came to the Editor´s Office on 25.01.2008.