Thesis for a Candidate Degree in Pedagogical Sciences (Doctor of Philosophy) in Specialty 13.00.10 – Information and Communication Technologies in Education. – Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University, Institute of Information Technologies and Learning Tools of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ternopil, Kyiv, 2018.
The thesis is devoted to the problem of using the computer ontologies system as a means to form design competences of future engineering teachers.
The thesis provides theoretical analysis of the problem and suggests a new solution to the scientific problem, which consists in the development and theoretical substantiation of the methodology of using the computer ontologies system as a means to form the design competences of future engineering teachers in the field of computer technologies.
The concept of ontologies in the context of computer sciences has been investigated. Thus by computer ontologies we mean a formalized representation of knowledge about a particular subject field (environment, world) suitable for machine processing. Based on the contents of the design competences of an engineering teacher such directions of using ontologies in their professional activities are identified: interface; natural language processing; question and answer systems; classification of goods and services; semantic layout of a text; modeling of the organizational structure of enterprises; systems of regulatory and reference information and the suggested in the research design of didactic materials. We have given the definition of the computer ontologies system by which we mean a computer program or a package of programs that allows to build computer ontologies from a certain subject area and perform operations related to the formal representation of sets of concepts and relationships between them. We have distinguished the criteria to select the computer ontologies system: 1) software architecture and tools development; 2) functional compatibility; 3) convenience and simplicity.
The content and structure of the design competences of engineering teachers while using computer ontologies systems are considered and four interrelated components of their formation are distinguished: 1) motivational and goal-oriented; 2) cognitive-intellectual; 3) professional activity; 4) effective-reflexive. The criteria (value, knowledge, operational, evaluative and analytical) of designing competencies formation and their indices are determined, and four levels of the formation of these competences are determined by means of computer ontologies systems: high (creative), necessary (sufficient), critical (insufficient), low (inadmissible).
We have established integrated ontological models of the academic course object field, university resources and a student’s profile. We have suggested a computer ontologies systems usage model based on three levels: 1) the interface; 2) logical; 3) data to automatically design electronic didactic materials on the basis of the algorithm method and the developed ontological models. In accordance with the model and the structure of design competences, we have developed the computer ontologies systems usage model as a means to form the design competences of future engineering teachers. The elaborated model is a set of the goal-oriented, content, technological and analytical and effective components.
To implement the model of computer ontologies system usage as a means to form future engineering teachers’ design competences the pedagogical conditions of their use has been proved: 1) to provide motivation and stimulation of educational and cognitive activity to use the computer ontologies system and model their application in the context of different spheres of professional activity of future engineering teachers in the field of computer technologies; 2) to use in the process of training future engineering teachers active forms, methods and innovative teaching tools, which provide an opportunity to design teaching materials using computer ontologies systems, whose functional capabilities are the basis for their design competences formation; 3) to elaborate teaching materials for didactic design on the basis of ontologies by means of computer ontologies systems to form engineering teacher’s design competences.
We have developed the methodology for using computer ontologies as a means to form design competencies based on competency, system-activity, resource, practice-oriented approaches to the choice of forms and methods of training.
