Media competence in the system of student’s research work

The article describes the experience of forming the media competence of a future engineer when students perform research work. The methodological basis of the research includes competence-based, personcentered and system-activity approaches. The research methods are: analysis of scientific literature, defended dissertations of media educators, generalization of practical experience in the implementation of media education technologies, observation. The authors of this article consider media competence as the key competence of an engineering and technical specialist. This is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, under the conditions of modern society, the role and importance of the engineering education system, as the engine of the national system of the innovative economy of Russia, is increasing. Secondly, the digitalization of society poses the problem of the correspondence of professional education to the needs of employers. Thirdly, the co-evolution of the information and educational space makes the task of forming and developing the media competence of future engineers urgent, which is the subject of media education research. The authors consider the essence of the concept “media competence”, which is the subject of research, and then present the authors’ definition of the notion “media competence of a future engineer”, which forms the basis of the study. Relying on a competence-based approach, integrating media education and research activities, the authors reach their aim within Irkutsk State Transport University, where the student’s research work is provided for in the curriculum and is one of the important stages in the training of a young specialist. Carrying out the leadership of the research work, the teachers of the Department of Mathematical Disciplines resort to the help of traditional and non-traditional forms of scientific work. The methodology of organizing and managing the student’s research work is carried out in several stages. The first stage of starting work is the choice of a leader and type of work, the selection of a research topic for a student. The next stage is the organization of the process of introducing media education into educational activities, regardless of the choice of the type of work. The further stage is directly the work of the research participants, which is considered on the example of the types of work: an essay, an abstract, writing an article and making a presentation at a conference – this is the final stage. When working in any direction, the researcher has to resort to the help of a media text, to consider different points of view on the chosen research problem. There is a high probability of encountering unverified information. Therefore, one of the tasks of the leaders is to teach research participants to choose verified, reliable information from a huge stream of media texts in order to apply it to research in order to fill and enrich their scientific work. The process of forming media competence is quite protracted, it requires regular monitoring by the leader and diagnostics. The expected result of all this work is the media competence of a future engineer being formed.