Anastasiya Penyaz

The article discusses the urgent problem of media students’ social and personal competences development within the framework of higher education, the role and place of project work in this process. The transformation of the media industry, the generational characteristics of modern students, the requirements for students' competences formulated in the FSES stimulate the search for the most effective methods for developing students' competence types, bringing to the fore not only professional, but also social and personal competences. The authors set the goal to determine the role and place of project activity in the formation of media students’ competences, to identify whether this type of educational activity can be an effective tool for the development of students' competences. Wide-ranging empirical material has been collected - expert interviews have been conducted with university professors working in media training areas (Lomonosov Moscow State University, HSE, Moscow State Pedagogical University, DSTU). In-depth interviews with students of these educational programs revealed their attitude to project work and drew attention to what personal and social competencies were developing in the process. The key attention in the article is paid to what specific competences, according to teachers’ and students' feelings, develop the work on projects. There are social competences among them such as flexible leadership, teamwork, delegation, sociability, empathy, joint creativity, and personal competences such as adaptability, responsibility, stress tolerance, control of emotions and relationships, openness and authenticity, self-development and introspection, self-organization, auto sympathy. In addition, the importance of project work as the most relevant today for the set of training methods for future media professionals is emphasized. The review of the scientific literature in the field of research, the author's definitions of the terms "social competence" and "personal competence" are of theoretical significance. An attempt is made to study and comprehend the role of project activities in media education not only as a way of acquiring knowledge, skills, but also as a combination of methods for the development of students' social and personal competences. In-depth interviews reveal the attitude of media students to project work, show the transformation of their personal and social competences, as well as the activation of self-cognition processes while working on educational projects. Perhaps for the first time an attempt has been made to comprehensively assess the advantages and disadvantages of project work in media education by the developers, teachers and managers of educational programs in the media field.