Digital educational resources for sustainable development and their impact on the motivation and independence of university students

Abstract

It is shown that the digitalization of higher education acquires the greatest pedagogical significance with methodically justified integration of sustainable development issues, since such resources shift the mastery of complex systemic concepts from the mode of information consumption to the mode of decision-making, forecasting consequences, and value-semantic reflection. Based on the material of a longitudinal experiment of 2021–2023 conducted in three universities of humanitarian and technical profiles (n=648; directions related to ecology, economics, and sociology), the impact of the specialized digital module «Designing Sustainable Systems» (interactive maps, simulators, real-time databases, problem-based learning, and gamification) is compared with standard electronic content. Comprehensive diagnostics of academic motivation and self-regulation, analysis of digital traces in LMS, expert assessment of project works, and statistical verification of differences record a pronounced restructuring of the motivational profile when working with an activity-saturated digital environment: the increase in cognitive interest in the experimental group amounted to 77,51% (4.18→7.42), professional value – 60,43% (5.08→8.15) with a simultaneous decrease in pragmatic orientation towards grades by 31,59% (8.39→5.74); in the control group, changes remain moderate. Components of academic autonomy are significantly enhanced: the share of students with a low level of time planning decreases from 44,89% to 18,45%, high level of information literacy reaches 45,92% (with 9.87% low level), and reflective competence demonstrates growth of high values to 31,88% with a decrease of low values to 21,34%. A dependence of the quality of understanding sustainable development on the type of digital activity is established: research actions (simulations, data analysis) are associated with the highest final score of 88.49 versus 57.49 for passive viewing/reading; communicative activity particularly enhances the social aspect (78.34). The obtained data argue that the pedagogical value of digital resources is determined by the architecture of activity (open tasks, feedback, interdisciplinary synthesis), rather than the transfer of materials online, while tutor support is required for students prone to passive strategies and prevention of templated thinking due to excessive algorithmic structuring of tasks.