Results Analysis of Russian Students’ Participation in the Online International Educational Project X-Culture

• Main Authors: Irina Zakharova, Aleksandra Kobicheva, Natalia Rozova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
• Series: Education Sciences
• Subjects: international educational project; project-based classroom; intercultural competencies; perception of educational goals; self-motivation; evaluation of the achieved results
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/9/3/168

The purpose of the paper is to assess the experience of Russian students in the online project class. The authors studied the impact of the international project “X-Culture” on the level of development of socio-cultural competencies of students and their knowledge of the English language. An additional aspect of the analysis was the question of the connection of students’ perception of the goal of participation in the international project “X-Culture” with their self-motivation and self-assessment of the success of the results achieved. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods—student testing, database analysis provided by the project “X-culture”, and focus group records. The result of the participation has been inconsistent. As expected, such sociocultural competence as the level of proficiency in English increased among the majority of students, as confirmed by the values of the student’s criterion for the results of language testing, conducted before and after the project. At the same time, average indicators of sociocultural competences such as “interpersonal skills”, “creativity”, “leadership”, and “friendliness” have deteriorated during the project that is confirmed by the trends lines of time series. The focus group revealed differences in terms of participation in the X-Culture project, their connection with self-motivation, and student satisfaction with the results achieved. Students who have achieved high levels of sociocultural competences have set themselves the goals of participation in the project related to the improvement of professional competencies and intercultural communications. At the same time, students were most satisfied with their activities in the project and the results achieved, aimed at obtaining new professional knowledge and skills, and students whose goal was simply to obtain an international certificate of the project participant.