Abstract:

One of the reasons that hinders the strategy of Russia’s innovative development is the problem of a shortage of personnel who are able to combine the country’s intellectual and technological resources and commercialize the innovations being created both on the domestic and global markets. The introduction of a new educational program “Innovation” can become the possible solution. Interdisciplinarity is a distinctive feature of this educational paradigm and is provided through a balanced combination of various fields of knowledge: nature, technical, economic and managerial sciences [1]. Currently, there are more than eighty universities in Russia, which teach students “Innovation”.

However, the analysis of the interaction between business and education shows the dissatisfaction of businessmen with the capabilities of university graduates [2]. Among the complaints made by representatives of employers there are a lack of special knowledge, a narrow professional horizon, incompliance of knowledge with practice, psychological unpreparedness for the realities of workdays [3].

When designing a prospective bachelor’s program “Innovation”, the authors applied a project approach, taking into account the employers’ claims. There was formed a list of interested parties. More than ten stakeholders have been identified, including employers, schools, partner and competitive universities, government bodies, etc. The analysis of stakeholders made it possible to identify the main problems in the implementation of the “Innovation” educational program and create such matrices: power / interests, power / influences, influences / impacts. The identified issues were the basis for making a tree of problems, the “trunk” of which, according to our research, consists of such problems as “Russian education lags behind the world leading universities” and “businessmen are discontent with the graduates’ skills”. Creating a new educational program, we “grew” a goal tree using the principles of the logical-structural approach.

As a result, we have developed the draft curriculum for the program (in the Russian terminology it corresponds to State Educational Standard of Higher Education 3++), which proposes introducing a number of additional disciplines, namely management in technical systems, personnel management, self-management. For clarity of the results they are presented as a matrix of competencies.

References:
[1] I.L. Tukkel, “Innovations and business: problems of staff assistance”, Forum “Inoprom – 2014”. Business program “Intellectual industry”. Yekaterinburg, July 8-12, 2014. Retrieved from http: // Irdclub.ru wp-content/uploads/2014/ Tukkel.pdf
[2] A.V. Belotserkovsky, “On the aligning of educational and professional standards”, Higher education in Russia, no. 6, pp. 26-31, 2015.
[3] E.V. Manakova, “Employers’ requirements for university graduates: Competence approach”, Bulletin of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Series “Economy”, no. 1 (25), pp.15-25, 2014.

Keywords:

Innovation, bachelor's program, business requirements, curriculum.