THE PROJECT METHOD IS AN EFFECTIVE INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR THE FORMATION OF KEY COMPETENCIES OF FUTURE SPECIALISTS

The project method is considered as a pedagogical technology that involves a set of creative methods: research, exploration, and problem solving. The article emphasizes that the chief principle of learning with the help of the project method – “learning through the action”, according to which the essence of the learning process is discovery, a constant, real embodiment of something new. The essence of the project technology is to stimulate students’ interest in certain problems, involving the possession of a certain amount of knowledge, and through project activities that include solving one or a number of problems, show the practical application of acquired knowledge from theory to practice, harmoniously combining academic knowledge with pragmatic, adhering appropriate balance at each stage of training. It was researched that implementation of the project technologies in the educational the process may face certain problems but the active participation of students in the project work opens opportunities in an interesting form to develop their abilities and, most importantly, their personality.


INTRODUCTION.
Today, it is clear to many teachers (pedagogs, andragogs) that not all student teaching methods are effective and appropriate. Senior students are young people who already have some life experience and initial professional experience gained through practices that take responsibility for their own lives and behavior, have a level of self-awareness that is constantly growing, so they can be categorized as adults.
The main features of adult learning are the conscious attitude to the process of their own learning, the need for independence and the practical orientation of the knowledge, skills they acquire. Adults want to learn if they see a real opportunity to apply learning outcomes to improve their activities and their lives. In addition, they seek to participate actively in the learning process, seek to bring their own experience and life values into specific learning situations. Named psychological characteristics of adults require specific approaches to vocational training, changes in the organization of teacher interaction with students, and above all changes in teaching methods.
The method of projects is nowadays considered to be the technology of the 21st century, because it enables students to effectively develop key competences: the ability to learn, information-communication, general cultural, health-saving, civic, social competences; gives the opportunity to involve in research and search activities, to create additional motivation for learning.
The purpose of educational projecting is to create conditions for the teacher during the educational process, in which his result is the individual experience of the project activity of the student. Working on a project is a practice of personally oriented learning in the student's work based on his / her free choice, taking into account his / her interests.
The method of projects (or project method) in the world of pedagogy since the late XIX -early XX centuries is known as a method of problems. It communicated with the ideas of humanistic direction in philosophy and education, developed by the American philosopher and educator John Dewey, as well as his student William Heard Kilpatrick.
Crucial meaning to the development of project ideas was formulated by J. Dewey and the chief principle of learning -"learning through the action", according to which the essence of the learning process is discovery, a constant, real embodiment of something new. It became the basis of the method developed by the scientist and it was also called as "problem method".
An essential purpose of the project method is to provide students with potential on their own to acquire knowledge in the course of solving practical problems or problems that require integration of the information from various subject areas, to implement not only general but also professional competences.
The variety of goals and objectives of the project method indicates its versatility didactic, cognitive, educational, socializing and developing its functions. The didactic function of the project involves the development of students' ability to construct their knowledge, to present the results of his work, forms the skills of self-organization, and provides acquaintance with different ways of information processing. Cognitive function helps to increase motivation to acquire new knowledge, skills development, produce, argue and prove their ideas. The developmental function of the project involves the development of creative and research abilities, formation of the communicative skills, development of the critical thinking, analysis and reflection skills. The educational function provides awareness of one's own actions regarding selfdiscipline and responsibility, promotes formation of the universal values. The socializing function involves the development of the communication skills in society, independent view of events and phenomena, understanding their capabilities and awareness of their own role while working in a team The project method is a pedagogical technology that involves a set of creative methods: research, exploration, and problem solving. Teacher within the project acts in various roles: developer, coordinator, expert and consultant.
The The project method is a flexible learning system model of the organization of educational process focused on creative self-realization of the person, due to the development of her (his) intellectual and physical abilities, willpower and creativity abilities in the process of creating of the new goods and services under the teacher's control, and they have subjective or objective novelty, as well as practical significance.
The project is an independently planned and implemented by students work in which speech communication is woven into the intellectual and emotional context of other activities.
The project method is a pedagogical technology that provides a certain set of educational and cognitive techniques that allow you to solve one or another problem as a result of independent actions of students with the obligatory presentation of these results.
The method of projects is a way to achieve the didactic goal through the detailed elaboration of the problem (technology), which should end quite real, tangible practical result, design in one way or another.
If we talk about the project method as a pedagogical technology, then this technology includes a set of research, search, and problem-solving methods, creative in their content. The essence of the project technology is in the functioning of a holistic system of didactic tools (content, methods, techniques, etc.), which adapts the educational process to the structural and organizational requirements of educational design.
The essence of the project technology is to stimulate students' interest in certain problems, involving the possession of a certain amount of knowledge, and through project activities that include solving one or a number of problems, show the practical application of acquired knowledge from theory to practice, harmoniously combining academic knowledge with pragmatic, adhering appropriate balance at each stage of training.
Teachers' interest in the project technologies is currently very high. Therefore, at the present stage of development of education there is a problem of the need to prepare teachers for usage of the project technologies, which is one of the ways to improve professional competence of the modern teacher and is an effective tool in the modern process of educational development, which is daily accompanied by the introduction of new technologies and updating the forms and methods of organizing the education of high school students.
In research projects the dominant activity is research, has a structure close to the scientific research, provides for the relevance and formulation of the research problem, its subject and object, development of a plan, solutions, clearly defined goals, choice of methodology and hypotheses, application of the relevant research methods and sources of information, processing and systematization and discussion obtained results (abstracts, articles, reports at scientific conferences, essays, analytical works, studies and generalizations, perspective pedagogical experience, performance of diploma works) [6].
Role projects are projects in which the structure, as in creative ones, remains open until completion work. The nature and content of the project is determined by the roles of the participants (literary characters, fictional characters). The degree of the creativity in these projects is very high and roleplay prevails. The results of these projects are planned for beginning of execution or emerge only at the end.
Familiarization and orientation projects -a type of information projects that are integrated into research projects and are their organic part (module). Conducted for the purpose of information retrieval and analysis. The structure is similar to subject research project, is determined by: the subject of information retrieval, phased search with designation of intermediate results; the analysis of the collected facts is carried out, the general conclusions are formulated; search for information in certain areas, analysis of new facts, generalizations, conclusions; general conclusion, registration of results (discussion, presentation, external evaluation).
Creative projects do not provide a detailed structure of joint activities, but only agreement on the planned results and the form of presentation. It can be a work, a movie, a newspaper, video, holidays, game, expedition and others.
Registration of the results of the creative project demands registration in the form of a video script, work plan, article, report, holiday program, design, newspaper headings, and album.
Information projects are aimed at collecting, summarizing and analyzing information about a phenomenon or object. The structure of the project includes relevance, purpose, sources of information; information processing (analysis, generalizations, comparisons, conclusions); result (article, abstract, report, video, etc.); presentation (publication, discussion in a teleconference, etc.).
Concerning practically oriented projects, they assume that the result of their participants is determined from the very beginning and focused on the social interests of the participants. The project provides a clearly defined structure, scenario of activity of participants with definition of their functions, participation of each participant in registration of the final product. In this project, it is important to organize coordination work and its step-by-step discussion; updating both joint and individual efforts; organization of the obtained results and their implementation in the practice.
Aim of the work: to reveal the essence of the concepts "project", "project method", "project technology", the importance of project technologies in educational activities.
Materials and methods in work. To realize the main goal of this work and solve some set of tasks, a number of interrelated and complementary methods was used: general scientific -analysis of scientific and methodological literature, synthesis, comparison and generalization, which made it possible to find out the peculiarities of theoretical and practical approaches that underlie the development of the studied educational phenomenon, formulate baselines and generalized conclusions of the work.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.
The project is such an open and dynamic form of organization of students' educational activities and teacher's pedagogical activity, which involves their choice and creative decision.
The project is a form of organization of the educational process. Project (design) is the content of learning. The most modern spheres of human activity are usually based on projecting. Projecting can be the basis of professional special courses. Project is a specific method of learning. It can be used during the lessons and in extracurricular work, focused on achieving the goals of the students themselves, so unique, forms a large number of skills, therefore it is effective, it forms experience, therefore irreplaceable. The project method is an educational technology that aims at gaining students' knowledge in close connection with real life practice, developing their skills through the systematic organization of problem-oriented educational search [3].
Project technology involves systematic and consistent modeling of problemsolving situations that require search efforts aimed at research and development of optimal ways of project creation from the participants of the educational process, their indispensable protection and analysis of results.
The method of projects is a pedagogical technology that focuses not on the integration of actual knowledge, but on their application and acquisition of new knowledge for the active development of new ways of human activity. The project is multifaceted, effective, prestigious and inexhaustible.
The method of projects allows solving the corresponding problems, which involves, on the one hand, the use of different methods, teaching aids, and on the other -the integration of knowledge and skills from different fields of science, technology, creative industries. The results of project implementation should be "tangible", that is, if it is a theoretical problem, then its concrete solution, if practical -the finished product of the project [2].
Carrying out project activities requires careful preparation of the teacher who is to determine actual and significant themes and problems for the projects that are necessary for research; structures of the project; methods of solving certain tasks (including research).
The application of the project method is an urgent requirement of today. The project method combines research and productive activity with the process of acquiring knowledge and skills, based on personal interests and awareness of the professional importance of the project.
The project can be carried out individually, collectively (throughout the academic group) or in micro groups of 2-3 students.
The topic of the project is chosen on the initiative of the students. The most effective, as practice has shown, is the student's choice of a project on the topic of the variant module of the vocational training program, which he chose at the beginning of the semester for self-development. It is advisable to carry out a creative project by the student in the same sequence and according to the same requirements as the student project.
Students who are the future teachers -must be conducted at all stages of the creative educational project with the simultaneous mastering of knowledge about the organization of technological activities of students. Only in such a way, the student can understand and learn all the features of the project technology of studying, and personally feel all its difficulties [4].
In addition, as it turns out, the most difficult part in the project activity is the choice and justification of the theme of the project object. As experience has shown, if the students are not provided with the methodological assistance at this stage, most of them are confused.
Teacher's methodological assistance in this situation may consist in the following actions: brainstorming to find a common solution; organization of work with a large amount of visual material, including online sources and display of student work of past years, to provide active work of imaginative thinking and imagination; analyzing curricula, textbooks to look for options for the work objects; after all, the teacher's own suggestions, if the student could not determine in his search.
The project object should be necessary and useful, original, aesthetically appealing, relatively time consuming, and one that can be offered by the teacher as a project activity object for students of a certain group [1].
It is important to evaluate all the projects, because only in such a way their effectiveness can be monitored, shortcomings, the need for timely correction. The nature of the external evaluation largely depends on the type of project, and on its topic (content), conditions.
The criteria for evaluating the work on the project are generally accepted: 1) practical significance and relevance of the problems, the adequacy of the research topic; 2) correct use of research methods and processing of the obtained results; 3) creativity and non-standard thinking; 4) sufficient depth of immersion in the problem, the use of knowledge from other fields; 5) aesthetics and correctness of registration of a final product; 6) ability to answer opponents' questions, conciseness and provability of answers.
Thus, the practical use of the results of the study will contribute to the optimal solving the problems of innovative development of education, namely the introduction of innovative technologies in higher education process.
Implementation of the project technologies in the educational the process may face certain problems, namely: the usage of the project technologies in the educational process requires deep theoretical and practical knowledge, system and creative thinking from the teacher, which is not inherent to every teacher; inadequacy of the teacher's choice of the form of the educational project to the set goals, goals and objectives can nullify the learning outcomes and demotivate students; students may not understand the purpose, goals and objectives of the study project, and as a consequence, not achieve the project goal that is defined by the teacher; insufficiently developed material and technical base of training institution (limited access to the Internet, limited library fund, lack of funds for presentation of project results, etc.) can complicate students' work on the project; the complexity of developing the appropriate tools and instruments of the project evaluation [5].

CONCLUSION.
Thus, the active participation of students in the project work opens opportunities in an interesting form to develop their abilities and, most importantly, their personality.
Creating conditions for becoming, developing, "retaining the ability to personality growth" (according to J. Dewey) can be considered as the main task, the purpose of modern education. Improvement of teaching methods, the constant search for new ways of learning in this context can be considered a condition for creating an intellectually and spiritually enriched environment, where the personality will develop.
Working on a project is the development of the ability to independently seek knowledge, to apply the features of their critical (reflective) thinking in the process of exploring a particular problem.
Performing the project, students learn to plan their work, pre-calculating the possible results; use many sources of information; independently collect and accumulate material; analyze, compare facts, argue their point of view; make a decision; establish social contacts (distribute responsibilities, interact with each other); to create a "final product" -a material one carrier of project activity (report, abstract, film, calendar, magazine, prospectus, script); prepare a cycle classes on the topic; present what is created to the audience, evaluate yourself and others.
The main requirements for the application of the project method in the educational process are: definition of the problem task (situation), the solution of which requires critical and comprehensive analysis in the process of research; theoretical, practical, cognitive significance of the project; organization of students' research work (individual, pair, group); formation of the semantic part of the project with fixing of step-by-step results; choice of the research methods; collection, systematization, analysis of information; discussion of the results of the work (presentation, publication, web page, etc.); design and presentation of results; project evaluation; conclusions and identification of the promising areas for further research.
The analysis of the tendency of technology implementation into the educational process of many countries shows that the methodology of the project method becomes dominant, as it is extremely effective.
The method of projects allows to individualize educational process, gives the chance to the student to show independence in planning, the organization and the control of the activity. The application of project methodology in the classroom provides support for a lasting interest in learning a discipline, deepens and systematizes students' knowledge of the studied topic.