Experience in Modernizing Educational Technologies Based on the Innovative Practices of Scientific Research Activities

The use of information technologies for educational purposes is not just a new technological process, as it is so often regarded in our day and age, but also a new social adaptation approach based on “relevant” knowledge (“here and know”) in action, which directly and indirectly effects all aspects of social interaction together with social life as a whole. Nobody can guarantee that a society orientated towards new technologies will provide more comfort for rising generations than one built upon opinions and faith. Rapidly progressing cognitive sciences are already developing projects to reshape human physicality and mentality, while promoting ideas of “post-humans” and transhumanism. The intensive adoption of information technologies is often considered by all categories of teachers as a new, higher and more effective level of controlling the process of learning. This very well might be the case, if only human life from both a psychological and a social standpoint was based solely on cognitive processes, and if educational facilities were the only trustworthy broadcasters of true knowledge about nature, society and humanity. In reality the educational process is submerged in a system of complex social interactions, among which interactions between those who teach and those who learn are not the dominant kind. Implementing information technologies does not give any advantages to either side: it just makes their interaction more complicated. The accessibility of various sources of information means that additional effort and motivation is required to carry out constant self-education, the goal of which would be for rising generations to have their own opinion on the credibility of certain knowledge, as well as on its practical applicability. In this respect experience in the field of integrating educational and scientific research processes can be of special interest. This article is dedicated specifically to experience in combining traditional didactic methods of professional education with practices of scientific research activities conducted by the Center for Sociology of Management and Social Technology, IS RAS. The results were presented to an audience at the Young Scientist School (YSS)1 within the framework of a project by the Russian Science Foundation1. As an example a fragment was cited from an experiment dedicated to getting students of an academic institute of higher education (State Academic University of Humanitarian Science) involved in a scientific research process of collecting, analyzing and aggregating diagnostic information, all done online with the use of interactive services and specialized software. The significance of this assignment is outside the scope of merely fulfilling the standard curriculum. The results of accomplishing this task lead to expanding the intrascientific discourse concerning the problems of sociological study methodology and methods to the realm of problems associated with sociology of management: this not only promotes further theorizing of this branch, but also brings forth the matter of modernizing the institution of education while examining it as a problem associated with sociology of management.

information society, cognitive science, NBIC-technology, scientific research and educational practices, outlines of integration, remote online research, information society technologies.