The article deals with the creation and use of the cloud-oriented environment for flipped learning in the process of training future IT specialists in higher education institutions. It describes the organization of the students’ project work based on flipped learning using the services and resources of the cloud-oriented educational environment. It identified the following components of such an environment: resources of the university’s training portal, mass open online courses, profession-oriented software applications and project management services. The present research offers the model of flipped learning for the implementation of the cross-disciplinary project for the formation of professional and personal competences of future IT specialists. It provides the results of an experimental study of the effectiveness of the proposed cloud-oriented environment application in the implementation of the cross-disciplinary project from the perspective of students and teachers by three criteria: functionality for professional activity, project management and flipped learning.

Materials of the article are devoted to the experience of implementing cloud services in the process of training students at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. The latest research in the field of designing and creating e-environments for the organization of group project work has been analyzed. The e-environment model based on Microsoft SharePoint is developed and the method of using Office 365 cloud services in a single e-environment for organizing group project work of students is given. This article offers the developed criteria and selected tools for assessing the effectiveness of using the e-environment for the organization of group project work. It presents the materials and analysis of the results of applying the project method in the course of studying the academic discipline “Information Technologies” at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. It also defines the advantages of applying e-environment based on Microsoft SharePoint for the organization of students’ project work.

This chapter discusses theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of a design of a university learning environment for SMART education. Smart technology is analyzed against university background. The authors consider a process of transformation from e-learning to smart education, in particular the VLE objective according to the concept of smart education, formation of individual learning trajectories in a smart environment and a quality university educational environment for smart education. In the second part of chapter, the authors look at the development of teacher ICT competence of teachers in the system of smart education and present their conclusions. The references include more than thirty items: articles, books, chapters, conference proceedings on SMART education, university learning environment, virtual learning environment (VLE).

The problem of technological universities lagging behind the level of development of the IT-industry can be solved only on condition that technological IT companies actively participate in training of future IT-professionals. Only cooperation between IT-companies and IT-faculties can provide effective training of future IT-professionals. Universities require access to new technologies in order to support students and teachers of STEM-faculties, so that they would keep up with the level of technology development. The article analyzes the trends of cooperation between universities and IT companies. For example, the integration of Microsoft resources and services into the University e-learning environment identified the impact of using appropriate resources for the development of professional skills and “soft skills”. The present article suggests a model of integrating Microsoft resources and services into the e-learning environment.

In today’s IT industry, it is important to develop the ability of IT students to collaboratively develop software, professional and personal skills. An effective method for developing such skills in future IT specialists is to organize different types of educational projects related to different programming technologies during the execution of mini projects, group and individual project assignments, term papers, academic training within the academic disciplines. The paper summarizes the results of a pedagogical study involving 29 expert students who study Computer Science and Software Engineering and used cloud service for GitHub collaborative IT development projects. The research findings testify, the most effective characteristics of this service, according to experts, identified the possibility of collaborative development of software (i1), the convenience of bug tracking (i3) and the convenience of the code editor (i7). It offers examples and results of using GitHub cloud service in the process of executing educational projects by future IT specialists.