The methodology of assessing the social and communicative skills of future architects in the process of business games

The purpose of the article is to substantiate and test the methodology for conducting and evaluating social and communicative skills formed through business games using the example of the game «Twins and Clones». The development of a questionnaire revealing the level of formation of the required skills was carried out on the basis of an analysis of scientific publications devoted to the creation of a criterion-assessment apparatus and the specifics of the psychological stages of training future architects. Criteria for assessing the level of formation of social and communicative skills in accordance with the three stages of their formation were proposed: identification of motivation to implement socio-communicative practices in architectural design (1st stage); experience of including socio-professional interaction in educational design with the participation of a teacher (2nd stage); experience of independent inclusion of socio-professional interaction in educational design (3rd stage). More than 80 students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Orel State University named after I.S. Turgenev participated in the empirical research. A comparison of the results of the ascertaining and formative experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of the developments. The business game led to a significant (15–20%) improvement in social and communication skills among 90% of participants, especially in terms of motivation for professional communication and experience using it in educational projects. In oral surveys, students also positively assess new experiences. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time a step-by-step assessment system of an architect's social and communicative skills was proposed, and a comparison of the level of proficiency in the architect's social and communicative skills was carried out before and after the integration of a contextual business game into the educational process. In the development of the research, it is planned to expand the integration of social and communicative practices into the process of professional education of students, mastering the successful experience of architects and acquiring creative independence when using social and professional communications in architectural activities.