Developing the visual competency in the students’ project activity

Modern visual culture requires established skills of visual competency from all participants in communication. These skills are necessary, among other things, for creating educational, informational, advertising, and other materials. However, such skills are not always formed during training at universities. Even in the training program for future communication specialists, visual competency is rarely the goal of the study, make the same mistakes occur often in the students’ projects.The students’ visual competency developing methodology proposed in the article is based on the analysis and development of the visual concept of a communication project. The author generalized her own experience of working with students in the direction of training 43.03.01 “Advertising and Public Relations” in the Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin.Modern approaches to the formation of competencies necessary for working with visual images in the digital environment are analyzed and systematized: ICT competencies, media literacy, visual literacy, and communicative competency. A set of practical tasks with methodological guidelines for setting the goal and objectives of the project, analyzing the context of communication, collecting visual materials, and creating a visual image of the project is proposed. By the method of systematization of project and didactic tasks, the components of visual competency are revealed.The scientific novelty of the research consists of revealing the didactic content of all stages of developing the visual concept of the project and systematizing the components of visual competency. The presented set of tasks can be applied in practical ICT classes and students’ project activities. The revealed system of visual competency components can be used in the development of methodological recommendations. The article is addressed to media pedagogues, students conducting project activities, as well as specialists implementing communication projects using visual media