Professional Training of Bachelors in Information Technologies based on

Education for Sustainable Development Principles

Serhii L. Koniukhov

1 a

, Iryna V. Krasheninnik

1 b

, Kateryna P. Osadcha

1 c

Evgeniy A. Lavrov

2 d

and Olha V. Kotova

3 e

Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, 20 Hetmanska Str., Melitopol, 72312, Ukraine

Sumy State University, 2 Rimsky-Korsakov Str., Sumy, 40007, Ukraine

Kherson State University, 27 Universytetska Str., Kherson, 73000, Ukraine

Keywords:

Bachelors in Information Technologies, Education for Sustainable Development, Professional Training,

Experimental Research.

Abstract:

The article examines the professional training of future bachelors in Information Technologies (IT) at uni-

versities in the context of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN General

Assembly, as well as the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) principles. The UNESCO documents

on education for sustainable development, scientiﬁc sources on the professional training of future IT special-

ists, as well as the integration of sustainable development into relevant educational programs are analyzed. The

methodology and results of experimental work carried out intending to overcome existing contradictions, pro-

moting sustainable development of information technology education and implementation of ESD principles

in the process of professional training of future bachelors in IT are presented. In particular, the organizational

and methodological conditions, that were implemented into the educational process, and experimental data are

presented. The effectiveness of the experimental work was proved by statistical veriﬁcation of the reliability

of the obtained data.

1 INTRODUCTION

The achievement of the Sustainable Development

Goals set in 2015 by the UN General Assembly (Gen-

eral Assembly, 2015) is linked to the training of

highly qualiﬁed professionals from all sectors of the

economy who are capable of reﬂection, professional

mobility and lifelong learning, aware of the responsi-

bility for the results of their activities. Such training

is based on Education for Sustainable Development

(ESD) principles.

According to UNESCO Roadmap “ESD empow-

ers learners to take informed decisions and responsi-

ble actions for environmental integrity, economic via-

bility and a just society, for present and future genera-

tions, while respecting cultural diversity. It is about

lifelong learning, and is an integral part of quality

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1925-3425

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6689-3209

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0653-6423

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9117-5727

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5533-3844

education. ESD is holistic and transformational ed-

ucation which addresses learning content and out-

comes, pedagogy and the learning environment. It

achieves its purpose by transforming society” (UN-

ESCO, 2014, p. 12).

Intensive development of information technology

and the need to overcome the numerous challenges

facing humanity, lead to an increase in requirements

for professionals whose activities are creation, imple-

mentation and maintenance of software. The profes-

sional training of such specialists in the bachelor’s

and master’s degrees in Ukraine is carried out in the

specialities of the ﬁeld of knowledge “Information

Technology”. To ensure that the level of profession-

alism of graduates of these specialities corresponds

to the requirements of society, effective procedures of

updating the content, forms, methods and means of

training should be implemented based on systematic

monitoring of the state of the industry and a balanced

combination of fundamental, applied and humanitar-

ian components of higher education.

An important area of professional work of IT spe-

cialists is the software development using an object-

354

Koniukhov, S., Krasheninnik, I., Osadcha, K., Lavrov, E. and Kotova, O.

Professional Training of Bachelors in Information Technologies based on Education for Sustainable Development Principles.

DOI: 10.5220/0010924300003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 1, pages 354-364

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

oriented approach, so graduates of higher education

institutions should understand its fundamental prin-

ciples, be able to use object-oriented programming

(OOP) languages, to apply existing and make their

own decisions, to decompose and compose tasks, to

document the process of building an object model,

etc. The lack of the necessary capabilities of the de-

velopers is one of the reasons for the low quality of

software products, which in some cases pose a threat

to the sustainable future. Other threats include a fo-

cus on current tasks and immediate goals, lack of un-

derstanding of global economic, environmental and

social issues, opportunities to overcome or minimize

them at the level of individual IT professionals or

businesses, the impact of IT products on the present

and future, and responsibility to future generations.

Scientists have thoroughly developed conceptual

foundations and examined some aspects of higher ed-

ucation and professional training of future software

engineers. However, insufﬁcient attention is paid

to developing their professional competence in the

study of object-oriented programming, as well as to

acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to pur-

sue activities with a view to sustainable development

goals. Therefore, there are contradictions between the

need to combine the fundamental theoretical and thor-

ough practical training of future software engineers

as highly qualiﬁed specialists and the limited time of

studying the disciplines of the vocational training cy-

cle; the necessity of using abstraction, decomposition

and composition in the process of studying OOP and

insufﬁcient level of abstract-logical thinking in stu-

dents; high level of complexity of OOP educational

content and insufﬁcient readiness of higher education

students to systematic cognitive self-activity; possi-

bility to demonstrate the object-oriented approach on

the example of large projects and traditional use of

educational tasks with limited content; the society re-

quirements for the professional training of software

engineers and the students’ lack of awareness of these

requirements; lack of knowledge on sustainability is-

sues and the need to promote a sustainable future in

professional life and daily life (Koniukhov, 2019).

The other important issue is the formation of pro-

fessional competencies of bachelors in Information

Technologies in the conditions of a shortened cycle

of professional training at universities. The contra-

dictions that hinder the efﬁcient formation of profes-

sional competences of future software engineers in

the shortened cycle of training at universities have

been identiﬁed, namely: between the requirements

for the level of training of software engineers and in-

sufﬁcient motivation of higher education students to

study and improve their skills; between the educa-

tional needs of higher education students and the lim-

ited ability to build individual educational trajectories

and a combination of different forms of education, in-

cluding non-formal one, at universities; between the

availability of higher education students with profes-

sional competences formed during the previous level

of education, and the content of educational programs

for shortened cycle training of future software engi-

neers at the bachelor’s level at universities; between

the need to comply with the provisions of the stan-

dards of higher education in Ukraine at the bachelor’s

level and the limited period of study in the educational

programs for shortened cycle training of future soft-

ware engineers at the bachelor’s level at universities

(Krasheninnik, 2020).

Therefore, there is a need to create at higher ed-

ucation institutions the conditions for students to de-

velop appropriate professional competencies.

Purpose of the article: to present the results of

experimental work carried out to overcome the men-

tioned contradictions and to promote sustainable de-

velopment of IT education and implementation of

ESD principles in the process of professional training

of bachelors in Information Technologies.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

As Mul

a et al. (Mul

a et al., 2017, p. 798) empha-

sis “The world is shaped by an education system

that reinforces unsustainable thinking and practice”.

So, it is very important to transform an education

system taking into account the aims of sustainabil-

ity and sustainable future. Education for sustainable

development principles is substantiated in numerous

UNESCO documents (UNESCO, 2014, 2009, 2016;

Tilbury and Mul

a, 2009) and discussed in (Dlouh

et al., 2017; Lobanova et al., 2020; Mul

a et al., 2017;

Vlasenko et al., 2021).

Internationally recognized ESD principles are

named by Tilbury and Mul

a (Tilbury and Mul

2009). They are the next: Futures thinking; Critical

and creative thinking; Participation and participatory

learning; Partnerships; Systemic thinking (Tilbury

and Mul

a, 2009, p. 5). Moreover, there are pointed

out key ESD learning themes (eg.: Gender equality;

Biological diversity; Ecological principles, ecosys-

tems; Natural resources management; Health and

well-being; Consumerism and ethical trade; Rural

and urban development; Corporate social responsibil-

ity) that are critically signiﬁcant to the sustainable de-

velopment agenda (Tilbury and Mul

a, 2009, p. 6).

Providing quality education as one of the goals

of sustainable development is an important area of

Professional Training of Bachelors in Information Technologies based on Education for Sustainable Development Principles

355

modern pedagogical research. In particular, in 2020

the International Conference on Sustainable Futures:

Environmental, Technological, Social and Economic

Matters (ICSF 2020) was held, during which a work-

shop on sustainable education was held (Semerikov

et al., 2020).

In particular, interesting results are presented in

publications (Lavrov et al., 2020; Hevko et al., 2020;

Glazunova et al., 2020), which consider ways to im-

plement the problems of sustainable development in

IT education.

Implementation of ESD principles in the pro-

cess of professional training of bachelors in Infor-

mation Technologies is in different ways, in partic-

ular: deep informatization of the educational process

(Fedorenko et al., 2019); enhancing opportunities for

professional mobility and lifelong learning for IT pro-

fessionals through the development and implementa-

tion of intelligent means of recognition of qualiﬁca-

tions and competencies obtained in different countries

and educational institutions (Osadchyi et al., 2017);

improving educational programs for the short cycle

of vocational training (Osadchyi and Krasheninnik,

2017; Krasheninnik, 2020); improving the content,

forms, methods and tools of object-oriented program-

ming learning (Koniukhov, 2019; Koniukhov and Os-

adcha, 2020); introduction of sustainability issues to

the content of educational programs (Penzenstadler

and Fleischmann, 2011; Fisher et al., 2016; Cai, 2010;

Hilty and Huber, 2018) and others.

Researchers in the ﬁeld of professional training IT

specialists note that sustainable development issues

are hardly addressed in relevant university educa-

tion programs. However, software developers should

take their share of responsibility for sustainability be-

cause of the growth of IT’s productivity in combi-

nation with cutting down of life cycles and growing

resource problems of our planet (Penzenstadler and

Fleischmann, 2011, p. 454). In this regard, it is nec-

essary to determine the mechanisms for introducing

sustainable development issues into university bache-

lors in Information Technologies curricula, as well as

motivating students and teachers to address them.

Penzenstadler and Fleischmann (Penzenstadler

and Fleischmann, 2011) offer a strategy for integrat-

ing the concept of sustainability into a degree course

scheme across three stages: 1) to propose a seminar

and form a core of interested people; 2) to give a lec-

ture series for broadening the awareness for sustain-

ability; 3) to establish sustainability as a topic by in-

tegrating it into the syllabus of appropriate software

engineering lectures with teach-the-teacher seminars.

During a seminar, students should examine chosen

issue and present their topic in class. They are of-

fered such seminar topics as “Climate killer Internet?

Energy-efﬁcient nets and systems have a notable im-

pact”, “Climate change research and software engi-

neering for climate research”, “Marketing for sustain-

ability — how can I make it matter for software engi-

neers?” etc. (Penzenstadler and Fleischmann, 2011,

p. 455-456).

Fisher et al. (Fisher et al., 2016) emphasize the

nexus between sustainability and computer science

and the necessity to integrate sustainability science

and engineering into computing education (Fisher

et al., 2016, p. 95). They consider two levels of inte-

gration of sustainability into computer science higher

education (the course level and the course component

level) and give different examples of such combina-

tion. Scientists identify the course-level integration

as introducing computer science courses that focus

on topics at the intersection of computing and sus-

tainability. These are such courses as “Computing,

Energy, and the Environment”, “Seminar on Compu-

tational Sustainability: Algorithms for Ecology and

Conservation” etc. Component-level integration is

implemented by introducing lectures, exercises, and

projects, with sustainability themes into computer sci-

ence courses that do not have a sustainability focus,

such as courses in computer organization, databases,

and artiﬁcial intelligence (Fisher et al., 2016, p. 93-

94).

Three sustainability integration strategies are of-

fered by Cai (Cai, 2010): 1) developing a new course

named “green computing” covering selected sustain-

ability and green computing topics; 2) designing

and developing independent green computing learn-

ing modules and projects that can be easily plugged

into the existing computer courses; 3) an integrative

and transformative approach to completely re-design

some computing courses with sustainability as one of

the top priorities (Cai, 2010, p. 525-526).

Hilty and Huber (Hilty and Huber, 2018) consider

that sustainable development is an important part of

the curriculum of ICT-related study programs and

content is strongly signiﬁcant to interest students in

it. They present results of an empirical investigation

to identify topics with the greatest potential to mo-

tivate students on sustainability. Researchers reveal

ﬁve clusters of such topics, namely: “ICT impacts

on sustainability”; “Material resources for ICT hard-

ware: Informal recycling”; “ICT as an enabler: Sav-

ing material and energy: Videoconferencing exam-

ple”; “Resource consumption: Global distribution”;

“Rebound effect: General concept” (Hilty and Huber,

2018, p. 652).

An example of IT students’ participation in a

project aimed solution one of sustainability tasks –

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

356

“provide safe, non violent, inclusive and effective

learning environments for all” (General Assembly,

2015) – is given in (Kompaniets et al., 2019).

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Statement

The ideas of education for sustainable development

were implemented in the process of research and ex-

perimental work on forming the professional compe-

tence of bachelors in Information Technologies.

The study consisted of two stages and covered

2015–2019. The main stage involved the professional

training bachelors in the ﬁeld of Information Tech-

nologies by the way of learning object-oriented pro-

gramming. An additional stage was aimed formation

of professional competencies of future IT specialists

in the conditions of a shortened cycle.

The difference between the main and additional

stages was the next:

1. The main stage was attended by students who

studied in the terms of the standard period of study

(4 years).

2. The additional stage was attended by students

who studied for a reduced period of study (2

years). Most of them already had a professional

education in the ﬁeld of information technology

at the level of a junior specialist.

We followed this sequence of pedagogical re-

search:

1) comparison of the initial state of students’ profes-

sional competence in the control and experimental

groups according to certain criteria and indicators,

establishing the absence of statistically signiﬁcant

differences;

2) introduction of the developed organizational and

methodological conditions for the formation of

professional competence of future IT specialists

in the learning process in the experimental group;

3) comparison of the ﬁnal state of students’ profes-

sional competence in the control and experimen-

tal groups according to certain criteria and indica-

tors, establishing the presence of statistically sig-

niﬁcant differences (Novikov, 2004, p. 10).

3.2 Main Stage Methodology

The main stage experiment was conducted during

2015–2018 at Ukrainian universities, in particular,

Bogdan Khmelnytsky Melitopol State Pedagogical

University. 135 computer science students have taken

part in the qualifying and forming stages of the peda-

gogical experiment. The number of the control group

(CG) was 69 people, experimental (EG) – 66 people.

In the course of this work, the levels of bache-

lors’ professional competence components identiﬁed

in (Koniukhov, 2019) were diagnosed:

• motivational: a set of motives that encourage

higher education students to actively study OOP;

their interest in the in-depth study and use of OOP

in their further professional activities; readiness

for self-development in object-oriented develop-

ment;

• cognitive: development of abstract-logical think-

ing; possession of techniques of formalization,

abstraction, decomposition and composition; un-

derstanding the fundamental basics of OOP and

their implementation in different programming

languages; set of theoretical knowledge of funda-

mental concepts and applied aspects of OOP;

• operational: skills in object-oriented program-

ming necessary for effective professional activity;

• reﬂexive: the ability to self-understand, analyze

and evaluate yourself as a specialist and your ac-

tions in the current situation, in the past and the

future, as well as yourself as a member of the soft-

ware development team.

Since the ECTS scale is used in the institutions of

higher education of Ukraine to evaluate students’ aca-

demic achievement, ﬁve levels of formation of these

components of the professional competence of bache-

lors in Information Technologies have been identiﬁed:

• professional: certiﬁes the formation of a compo-

nent of professional competence at the level of an

experienced software developer and the ability of

the student to enter professional activity as a mid-

level specialist without additional training, corre-

sponds to the level “A” of the ECTS scale;

• high: certiﬁes the formation of a component of

professional competence at the level of a junior

software developer and the ability of the student

to start professional activity and independent tasks

without additional training, corresponds to the

level “B” of the ECTS scale;

• sufﬁcient: certiﬁes the formation of a component

of professional competence at the level of the ju-

nior software developer and the ability of the stu-

dent to start professional activity and indepen-

dently perform tasks with additional training at

the enterprise, corresponds to the level “C” of the

ECTS scale;

Professional Training of Bachelors in Information Technologies based on Education for Sustainable Development Principles

357

• low: certiﬁes the formation of a component of

professional competence at the level of the novice

programmer and the ability of the student to begin

professional activity as a junior software devel-

oper only under the direct supervision and with

additional training at the enterprise, corresponds

to the level “D” of the ECTS scale;

• critical: certiﬁes the extremely low level of pro-

fessional competence component and the stu-

dent’s lack of ability to take up professional work

as a software developer, corresponds to the “E”

level of the ECTS scale.

In the experimental group, the educational process

was organized based on the following organizational

and methodological conditions (Koniukhov, 2019):

1. Formation of positive motivation for students to

study and apply in future professional activities

of OOP. The implementation of this condition in-

cluded a demonstration of examples of software

development practice, meetings with leading spe-

cialists of IT enterprises, organization of group

implementation of software projects, involvement

of students in the discussion of practical aspects

of the software engineering.

2. Formation of a cross-cutting content-activity line

of studying OOP within the disciplines of the vo-

cational training cycle. Within each successive

course, fundamental concepts of object-oriented

programming were repeated, and they were con-

sidered at a new level of complexity, taking into

account the speciﬁcs of a particular area of soft-

ware development.

3. Application of appropriate forms and methods of

formation in higher professional qualiﬁcations.

The implementation of this condition involved

the implementation of various types of software

projects, the use of training tasks in object-

oriented programming, interactive teaching meth-

ods and game technologies.

4. Use of modern information and communication

technologies in the process of education of stu-

dents of OOP, namely: software for educational

purposes, software development environments,

visualization tools, training management systems,

distance courses in academic disciplines and ad-

ditional specialized online resources.

Some ESD ideas were implemented during the de-

velopment of the students’ program projects. In par-

ticular, they were offered project topics such as devel-

oping programs for the statistical processing of obser-

vation data (demographic economic, meteorological,

medical, biological, etc.); development of educational

programs for students of general secondary education

institutions (simulators, didactic games, etc.); devel-

opment of programs for automation of separate pro-

duction processes for enterprises of different indus-

tries, etc. To create quality software, students had to

pre-analyze the problem given the problems of a sus-

tainable future and the goals of sustainable develop-

ment.

The measures envisaged by the pilot program

were implemented within the training disciplines

of the cycle of professional training: “Program-

ming”, “Object-oriented programming”, “Cross-

platform programming”, “Web application program-

ming and support”.

To evaluate the likelihood of the experimental data

obtained, a method of testing statistical hypotheses

was used.

The hypothesis of the absence of signiﬁcant dif-

ferences in the average values of indicators of the for-

mation of components of students’ professional com-

petence in control and experimental groups was tested

with Student’s t-test.

Volumes of control and experimental groups

= 69 and n

= 66 respectively. Number of de-

grees of freedom k = 133. Critical signiﬁcance of the

Student test for 133 degrees of freedom and signiﬁ-

cance level α = 0.05: t

≈ 1.98.

3.3 Additional Stage Methodology

The additional stage experiment was conducted dur-

ing 2016–2019 at Ukrainian universities, in particu-

lar, Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical

University. The research and experimental work in-

volved examining problems and contradictions, iden-

tifying ways of overcoming them, implementing or-

ganizational and pedagogical conditions for the for-

mation of professional competencies of future soft-

ware developers in the shortened cycle of training,

checking the effectiveness of the measures taken. A

pedagogical experiment has been consisted of quali-

fying and forming stages. It was carried out at various

stages among 405 Information Technologies students

of the bachelor grade majoring in 121 Software Engi-

neering, 122 Computer Science, 123 Computer Engi-

neering, who studied based on the shortened training

cycle. The control group included 207 students; the

experimental group consisted of 198 students.

In the course of this work, the levels of profes-

sional competence components of future software de-

velopers identiﬁed in (Krasheninnik, 2020) were di-

agnosed:

• motivational: internal motivation for professional

activity in the speciality of software developer,

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

358

continuing education and training; at the stage of

the pedagogical experiment the analysis was car-

ried out separately by the criterion of internal mo-

tivation to continue education and advanced train-

ing and by the criterion of internal motivation to

professional activity like a software developer;

• cognitive: complete acquisition of knowledge and

understanding of the disciplines of the training cy-

cle, the ability to formulate judgments based on

available information and cognitive skills;

• operational: the ability to practical application of

knowledge and skills in the professional activity,

as well as to the effective organization of this ac-

tivity;

• communicative: abilities for effective oral and

written communication in groups with different

composition of participants and goals of joint ac-

tivities;

• reﬂexive: the ability to reﬂect on educational and

production activities.

Five levels of formation of these components of

the professional competence have been identiﬁed:

• high: the component is formed to a sufﬁcient ex-

tent for the implementation of conscious educa-

tional and self-educational activities, as well as

independent solution of professional problems in

the ﬁeld of software development on the mid-

dle level; corresponds to level “A” of academic

achievements by the ECTS scale;

• sufﬁcient: the component is formed to a sufﬁcient

extent for the implementation of conscious edu-

cational and self-educational activities, as well as

independent (or with little help) performance of

professional tasks as a junior software developer;

corresponds to the level “B” of academic achieve-

ments by the ECTS scale;

• medium: the component is formed to a sufﬁcient

extent for the implementation of educational and

self-educational activities, as well as the imple-

mentation of production tasks in the process of

professional activity as a junior software engineer

under management and with the help of experi-

enced professionals; corresponds to the level “C”

of academic achievements by the ECTS scale;

• critical: the component is formed at a level sufﬁ-

cient to perform certain types of educational activ-

ities and production tasks in the process of profes-

sional activity as a junior software engineer under

the direct guidance and control of teachers or ex-

perienced professionals; corresponds to level “D”

of academic achievements according to the ECTS

scale;

• low: the component is formed at a level insuf-

ﬁcient for effective educational and professional

activities in the speciality of software engineer;

corresponds to the level “E” (satisfactory success)

or “F” / “FX” (unsatisfactory success) of aca-

demic achievements on the ECTS scale.

In the experimental group, the educational process

was organized based on the following organizational

and methodological conditions (Krasheninnik, 2020):

• formation of stable positive internal motivation to

higher education, professional activity, advanced

training;

• systematic review and updating of educational

programs for shortened cycle training of future

software developers at the bachelor’s level, taking

into account current trends in the ﬁeld of informa-

tion technology and higher education;

• providing future software developers opportuni-

ties for individual educational trajectories under

the conditions of the shortened cycle of profes-

sional training at universities;

• application of expedient forms, methods and

means of formation of professional competencies

of future software developers under the conditions

of the shortened cycle of professional training at

universities.

The probability of the results obtained at the quali-

fying and formative stages of the experiment has been

checked using the Fisher test in combination with the

Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.

4 RESEARCH RESULTS

4.1 Qualifying Stage

The empirical data obtained at the qualifying stage of

the pedagogical experiment gave reason to draw the

following main conclusions:

1) students in the control and experimental groups

found an insufﬁcient level of professional com-

petence development: approximately one-third to

two-thirds of them demonstrated low or critical

level of professional competence;

2) the initial level of professional competence in

both groups practically did not differ (the differ-

ence between the percentage of students at each

level of education in terms of individual compe-

tence components did not exceed 3%), which tes-

tiﬁed to their homogeneity.

Professional Training of Bachelors in Information Technologies based on Education for Sustainable Development Principles

359

According to the results of estimation of the

motivational component of professional competence,

34.78% of students (24 persons) of CG and 34.85%

of students (23 persons) of EG revealed low or criti-

cal level. At the same time, 46.38% of students (32

persons) of CG and 45.45% of students (30 persons)

of EG showed sufﬁcient level. So, at the end of their

ﬁrst year, they understood the need for knowledge

of object-oriented programming technologies and lan-

guages and were partially motivated to further study

OOP.

According to the results of the assessment of

the cognitive component of professional competence,

68.12% of students (47 persons) of CG and 68.18% of

students (45 persons) of EG have found low or criti-

cal level. This situation is to a certain extent because

the ﬁrst year focuses on the study of algorithmiza-

tion, structural and procedural programming, and the

mechanisms of OOP are mostly considered indirectly

to the extent necessary for writing programs in devel-

opment environments.

According to the results of estimation of the

operational component of professional competence,

75.36% of students (52 persons) of CG and 71.21%

of students (47 persons) of EG revealed low or criti-

cal level. The reason for this is that at the end of the

ﬁrst year students have initial experience writing pro-

grams with classes and objects, but they do not yet

use the full-scale OOP mechanisms.

As a result of assessing the reﬂexive component

of the professional competence, 47.83% of students

(33 persons) of CG and 48.48% of students (32 per-

sons) of EG revealed low or critical levels. At the

same time, 37.68% of students (26 persons) of CG

and 34.85% of students (23 persons) of EG showed

sufﬁcient level, which testiﬁed to the partial forma-

tion of the ability to evaluate themselves as a stu-

dent, member of academic group and software devel-

opment team, as well as the results of its activities.

Valuation of the obtained data. The hypothesis

about the absence of statistically signiﬁcant differ-

ences in the average values of indicators of the for-

mation of the components of students’ professional

competence in the control and experimental groups

was performed using the Student’s t-test.

The null hypothesis: there is no statistically sig-

niﬁcant difference between the samples, the average

values of the indicators of the professional compe-

tence components of the students of the control and

experimental groups are equal.

Alternative hypothesis: there is a statistically sig-

niﬁcant difference between the samples. the average

values of indicators of the formation of components

of professional competence of students in the control

and experimental groups differ signiﬁcantly.

The results of testing these statistical hypotheses

are given in table 1.

Table 1: Results of valuation of the obtained data (qualify-

ing stage of the experiment).

Components of

professional competence

emp

Conclusion

motivational 0.47 t

emp

< t

cognitive 0.33 t

emp

< t

operational 0.12 t

emp

< t

reﬂexive 0.01 t

emp

< t

Thus, it is proved that there is no statistically sig-

niﬁcant difference in the levels of the professional

competence components between students of the con-

trol and experimental groups at the qualifying stage of

the pedagogical experiment, that is, the samples are

homogeneous.

Based on the analysis of empirical data of the

qualifying stage of the pedagogical experiment, it was

concluded that the level of the professional compe-

tence of future software engineers was generally low

and critical.

To increase this level, the study of object-oriented

programming had to be organized in such a way as

to ensure the acquisition and completeness of stu-

dents’ acquisition of basic and special knowledge of

OOP (cognitive component), the effective formation

of their OOP skills and ability to use them to develop

software projects (operational component), persistent

high motivation to study OOP, its further use in pro-

fessional activity, and self-improvement in this ﬁeld

(motivational component), formation of the ability to

evaluate and responsible attitude to the results of their

work and role in the team (reﬂexive component).

4.2 Forming Stage

The empirical data obtained during the formative

stage of the pedagogical experiment gave reason to

make the following generalizations:

1) the overall level of students’ professional compe-

tence has increased: in both groups the increase

in the number of students at the professional and

high levels, as well as the increase in the aver-

age values of the indicators of the components of

professional competence, but the changes in the

experimental group were more signiﬁcant;

2) the ﬁnal levels of the components of students’ pro-

fessional competence in the experimental group

exceeded the corresponding indicators in the con-

trol group.

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360

Based on these data, a preliminary conclusion was

made about the effectiveness of implementing the or-

ganizational and methodological conditions for form-

ing the professional competence of bachelors in In-

formation Technologies in the process of studying

object-oriented programming.

The results of the assessment of the motivational

component of professional competence revealed that

in the experimental group the percentage of students

with professional and high level was equal to 21.21%

(14 people) and 42.42% (28 people) respectively. In

the control group, there were minor changes and this

indicator was 10.14% (7 persons) and 18.84% (13

persons), respectively. A signiﬁcant difference was

observed in the indicators characterizing the number

of students with low and critical levels: 6.06% (4 per-

sons) and 3.03% (2 persons) in EG; 15.94% (11 per-

sons) and 5.80% (4 persons) in CG respectively (ﬁg-

ure 1).

Figure 1: Formation of the motivational component of stu-

dents’ professional competence (forming stage of the exper-

iment).

According to the results of the assessment of

the cognitive component of students’ professional

competence, it was found that in the experimental

group the percentage of students with professional

and high level became equal to 21.21% (14 persons)

and 36.36% (24 persons), respectively. In the con-

trol group, there were slight changes and this indica-

tor was 4.35% (3 persons) and 11.59% (8 persons)

respectively. A signiﬁcant difference was observed in

the indicators characterizing the number of students

with low and critical levels: 9.09% (6 persons) and

3.03% (2 persons) in EG; 28.99% (20 people) and

8.70% (6 people) in CG (ﬁgure 2).

According to the results of the evaluation of the

operational component of students’ professional com-

petence, it was found that in the experimental group

the percentage of students with professional and high

level was equal to 19.70% (13 persons) and 40.91%

Figure 2: Formation of the cognitive component of stu-

dents’ professional competence (forming stage of the ex-

periment).

(27 persons), respectively. In the control group, there

were slight changes and this ﬁgure was 5.80% (4

persons) and 15.94% (11 persons), respectively. A

signiﬁcant difference was observed in the indicators

characterizing the number of students with low and

critical levels: 9.09% (6 persons) and 3.03% (2 per-

sons) in EG; 31.88% (22 persons) and 13.04% (9 per-

sons) in CG, respectively (ﬁgure 3).

Figure 3: Formation of the operational component of stu-

dents’ professional competence (forming stage of the ex-

periment).

According to the results of the evaluation of the

reﬂexive component of students’ professional com-

petence, it was found that in the experimental group

the percentage of students with professional and high

level was equal to 22.73% (15 people) and 30.30%

(20 people), respectively. In the control group, there

were slight changes and this indicator was 10.14%

(7 people) and 15.94% (11 people), respectively. A

signiﬁcant difference was observed in the indicators

characterizing the number of students with low and

critical levels: 6.06% (4 persons) and 3.03% (2 per-

sons) in EG; 23.19% (16 people) and 8.70% (6 peo-

ple) in CG, respectively (ﬁgure 4).

Professional Training of Bachelors in Information Technologies based on Education for Sustainable Development Principles

361

Figure 4: Formation of the reﬂexive component of students’

professional competence (forming stage of the experiment).

Valuation of the obtained data. Testing of the hy-

pothesis about the statistically signiﬁcant differences

in the average values of the formation of components

of students’ professional competence in control and

experimental groups, and therefore different levels of

formation of professional competence was generally

performed using the Student’s t-test.

The null hypothesis: there is no statistically sig-

niﬁcant difference between the samples, the average

values of the indicators of the professional compe-

tence components of the students of the control and

experimental groups are equal.

Alternative hypothesis: there is a statistically sig-

niﬁcant difference between the samples. the average

values of indicators of the formation of components

of professional competence of students in the control

and experimental groups differ signiﬁcantly.

The results of testing these statistical hypotheses

are given in table 2.

Table 2: Results of valuation of the obtained data (forming

stage of the experiment).

Components of

professional competence

emp

Conclusion

motivational 2.85 t

emp

> t

cognitive 6.09 t

emp

> t

operational 5.32 t

emp

> t

reﬂexive 2.87 t

emp

> t

Thus, the statistically signiﬁcant differences in the

levels of components of students’ professional com-

petence in control and experimental groups at the

formative stage of the pedagogical experiment were

proved. So, we can conclude that the average differ-

ence is not accidental, but is the result of the imple-

mentation of the proposed organizational and method-

ological conditions for the formation of professional

competence of bachelors in Information Technologies

in the process of studying object-oriented program-

ming.

4.3 Additional Stage

At this stage of research, the survey method was used,

the content of the disciplines of the cycle of profes-

sional training of bachelors in Information Technolo-

gies was updated taking into account the goals of sus-

tainable development, the implementation of educa-

tional projects was organized. The survey was con-

ducted using a modiﬁed Olsson questionnaire (Ols-

son, 2018).

At the formative stage of the experiment, posi-

tive changes at the levels of formation of the com-

ponents of professional competencies of future soft-

ware engineers have been recorded. In the exper-

imental group, these changes have been more pro-

nounced and at the end of the experiment, there have

been signiﬁcant differences between the control and

experimental groups. The share of participants in

the experiment with a sufﬁcient and high level of

formation of the motivational component of profes-

sional competencies (the criterion of formation of in-

ternal motivation to continue education and training)

in the control group has increased by 12.08%, in

the experimental group it has increased by 26.76%;

the motivational component (the criterion of forma-

tion of internal motivation for professional activity of

a software engineer) has increased by 13.52% and

26.77%, respectively; the cognitive component has

increased by 5.80% and 19.70%, respectively; the

operational component has increased by 10.63% and

23.23%, respectively; the communicative component

has increased by 4.83% and 23.23%, respectively;

the reﬂexive component has increased by 15.46% and

28.78%, respectively.

5 FURTHER RESEARCH

Research conducted in 2015–2019 has shown that the

introduction of sustainable development issues into

the content of curricula inﬂuenced positively the qual-

ity of training for IT specialists at universities. Of

greatest importance is the incorporation of students’

educational and scientiﬁc projects, when they have

the opportunity to get acquainted with the problems of

sustainability and the sustainable development goals

(SDG) as well as to offer ways of solving them, in par-

ticular, through the development of specialized soft-

ware.

Therefore, at the end of the experiment, it was

decided to continue the work on integrating the con-

tent of IT education in Bogdan Khmelnytsky Meli-

topol State Pedagogical University with sustainabil-

ity issues. We followed the recommendations out-

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362

lined in (Fisher et al., 2016; Cai, 2010; Hilty and Hu-

ber, 2018). In 2020, individual conversations were

held with educators of the Department of Informat-

ics and Cybernetics to determine the most promising

approaches to achieve this goal. As a result, it was

found that component-level integration and course-

level integration (according to Fisher et al. (Fisher

et al., 2016) classiﬁcation) are the most expedient.

The ﬁrst approach is the simplest to implement

since it only involves updating the content of training

courses and introducing additional topics or modules,

as well as changing the types of training activities.

Such work has already been partially carried out dur-

ing the 2015–2019 experiment as part of the training

of bachelors in Information Technologies. Therefore,

at the next stage, changes were made in the content of

the master’s training courses, as well as in the topic of

diploma projects. Besides, engaging students in the

research funded by a grant from the Ministry of Edu-

cation and Science of Ukraine (No. 0120U101970) to

achieve SDG 4 “Quality Education” also helps raise

their awareness of sustainability issues.

The second approach was decided to be imple-

mented by introducing new disciplines of students

free choice, the content of which is fully devoted to

the problems of sustainability. This direction presup-

poses the formation of completely new content, there-

fore such courses are now at the development stage.

6 CONCLUSION

The transformation of society to meet the goals of sus-

tainable development is impossible without the active

participation of each citizen. Training for such activ-

ities should be undertaken at educational institutions

of all levels based on Education for Sustainable De-

velopment principles.

The realization of the goals of education for sus-

tainable development in the process of professional

training of bachelors in Information Technologies im-

plies deep informatization of the educational process,

enhancement of opportunities for professional mobil-

ity and lifelong learning, improvement of educational

programs, the introduction of issues of sustainability

and content.

In the process of experimental work, attention was

paid to acquaint students with the goals and objec-

tives of sustainable development. We believe that it is

advisable to direct further research on the implemen-

tation of disciplines and individual modules aimed at

familiarizing students with the problems of a sustain-

able future and understanding of their role in solving

these problems in IT curricula.

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