Inquiry-ontological approach as basis for integration of special, technical, and humanitarian disciplines in training of future engineers

The dynamic development of science and technology, the introduction of innovations in all spheres of life impose increasingly high demands for the professional competence of engineers. In addition, the need for engineers who are able to work with modern information technologies, manage complex technical systems, and analyze large amounts of data increases in the era of digitalization and automation of production processes. This raises the needs to revise the content and methods of engineering education and to implement new educational programs and technologies. The need to improve engineering education contradicts the practice of the educational process with reduction of classroom hours, isolated teaching of disciplines, rapid loss of the relevance of educational materials. The authors propose to resolve this contradiction by applying a query-ontological approach in the teaching of the discipline “English for Specific Purposes”. This discipline is part of all education programs and aims to cultivate the readiness to use a foreign language in professional activities. The query-ontological approach posits that a search query serves as a tool for identifying the cognitive and linguistic needs of students, and, based on the needs’ analysis, facilitates the selection of interdisciplinary educational content. The authors provide a theoretical justification for the utilization of the query-ontological approach, detailing the technology for its implementation, which was tested during a pedagogical experiment comprising 11 stages. Throughout the experiment, adjustments were made to the number and content of the implementation stages to enhance the transferability of the approach. Furthermore, the necessity of a dynamic virtual environment was substantiated to simplify the application of this approach. A model of the virtual environment was presented, consisting of four modules: a testing module, an ontological module, a module for Internet queries, and a module for Internet resources.