Organization, Realization, Activation - Socialization!

Professor Sergey Khrapov, Research Supervisor of ASU’s Program “Socialization: CDIO Technologies”, has told us about outcomes of the Festival of Students’ Socialization Projects.

“Two our projects - the Theater Festival and the Podium - were held in 2013 for the first time. They were of great interest among both our students and young people from other universities. These projects are quite emotional, which encourages students to take part in them. Besides, their contents meet the cultural historical aspect of CDIO.

Students’ Sports Clubs (there are 104 clubs at ASU) and the Students’ Folk Crafts Club have been very crucial projects. I’d mention an exhibition of creative achievements by students of our Department of Architecture & Design, which was being held at the Leisure Center of ASU during the whole Festival. All the projects are versatile, which makes it possible to involve a large number of students in a new communicative environment and teamwork.

About 4, 000 students have been involved in socialization projects this year; that’s over a half of the total number of our full-time students. Seventeen teams from all our Departments (about 400 students) took part in the Podium; the same number of teams (about 300 students) took part in the Theater Festival. The two projects have gathered about 2, 000 in the audience, who also became active participants of our socialization activities. The Students’ Folk Crafts Club united 100 students. Over 1, 500 students have covered a new cycle in our 104 sports clubs.

The main problem the organizing committee faced was to provide all the creative groups and sports teams with necessary premises for rehearsals and training. Applications from departmental teams were often delayed, which caused us more difficulties. It was uneasy to coordinate the Socialization Festival with the Festival of Science & Innovations. But thanks to all those problems, our students could try themselves in a real situation of limited resources (spatial, temporal, and material ones); it stimulated them to master lean management and time management techniques and activated their organizational competencies.

The main idea of our Program “Socialization: CDIO Technologies” is to provide conditions to develop our students’ communicative, organizational, and creative competencies by means of team project-oriented activities during their extracurricular time. The Festival has revealed that ASU chose the right strategy: the excellent result was confirmed with the Six Sigma statistic technique, as well as by outside experts and with our students’ satisfaction level. Of course, different people assess all that differently, as our students are bright and creative people, but everyone got a good impression. Most participants say they increased the level of their communicative and organizational competencies, to say nothing of their creative ones.

I’d like to point out that this result was gained thanks to well-coordinated work by our students, the Students’ Self-Government Committee, the Students’ Direction for Socialization Support, the projects supervisors (Professor Olga Egorova, Dr. Galina Palatkina, Dr. Irina Kalimullina, and Dr. Elena Shander), and ASU’s management.

As for the next socialization cycle (October 01 - November 30, 2014), we’re planning the Students’ Sports Clubs, the Students’ Folk Crafts Club, the Battle of Choirs at ASU, and the Big Dances at ASU. We’re also discussing a new project, and we’re going the make the final decision in September.

I wish all the students of Astrakhan State University to appreciate and to use all those unique opportunities our University provides them most efficiently. Do be more decisive and mobile; learn new projects and new team roles. This is what will help you enrich your human capital - the necessary condition to make a successful career!”

Russian original information source: the Innovative Laboratory of Information Linguistics of ASU