Development of Human Potential: Design Thinking as a Way of Improving Professional Competencies of Economists

Abstract

In a post-industrial society, the quality of professional education becomes a leading factor in the formation of human potential. One of the ways to ensure the effectiveness of this process is the use of innovative educational technologies aimed not only at the formation of professional competences, but also at the development of creativity which, in the future, will contribute to the search for non-standard ways of solving real problems. The purpose of the work is to study the influence of interactive educational technologies based on the concept of design thinking on the success of students of economic specialties and their internal motivation to study mathematical disciplines. The format of a business game has been chosen as a method of implementing the concept of design thinking. It involved the construction of a mathematical model of a real economic problem and the use of a mathematical apparatus to solve it. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of gamification it has decided to distribute students according to academic performance and students ranked classes according to their preferences using the method of hierarchies analysis. The experience of implementing business games demonstrated by the example of the discipline “Operations Research and Optimization Methods” confirmed the effectiveness of this technique in the process of studying the disciplines of the mathematical cycle precisely due to the increase in students’ internal motivation. Compared to traditional teaching methods, the formation of students’ professional competencies has been enriched by the experience of solving transdisciplinary tasks. The results of the study allow us to conclude that the professional competencies of future economists are significantly improved thanks to the use of a business game in the learning process where a real economic problem is adapted to the topic of the discipline.