Abstract:

The participation of universities in international projects having close cooperation with enterprises has become a reality and a necessity of the modern world.

Results of such projects provide universities with great resource not only to develop in an assigned certain field but also in other areas, in particular, in teaching students English as a foreign language for professional communication.

The study examines such opportunities available on the example of a safety park created as a result of Russian-Finnish project dedicated to improving the system of labor protection and safety in construction industry which remains the industry with the highest level of risk all over the world.

The safety park, called the Smart Labor Polygon, was built for educational purposes, using the experience of Finland and in close cooperation with Finnish and Russian construction companies in the suburban educational site of Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering. The park includes physical installations of nine types of construction work which demonstrate both the correct work implementation and that with non-compliance with safety rules. The main idea is to demonstrate the consequences of non-compliance with safety rules at a construction site. The main goal is to reduce injuries and, accordingly, preserve the health and lives of workers employed in this traumatic area. Target audience are students, employees of companies responsible for labor protection, workers, etc.

Apart from the physical object, a computer educational program "Smart Labor" has been created which can be used to train occupational safety both in a classroom with personal computers and in a format for a virtual reality system what allows you to immerse a person in an interactive highly detailed virtual environment that imitates the built safety park.

The article describes applying the new material and the developed English version of the program with VR technologies not only for occupational safety training but also in English language class for students of engineering and technical specialties, primarily majoring in Technospheric Safety and Construction.

The experimental study was carried out using methods of observation, a satisfaction survey of three groups of students comprising closed and open questions, statistical methods of data analysis. The analyzed results showed that chosen approach to teaching and learning professionally oriented English proved to be very effective due to the interest of students in non-traditional forms, tools and technologies of education, influence of certain psychological factors as well as due to the educational material based on real experience of construction companies.

Keywords:

Higher education, teaching foreign language, teaching innovation, international project, occupational safety, VR technologies in education.