To become successfully competitive in the globalised post-COVID 19 virtual business world, the engineering students, besides learning the English language for Specific Purposes as stipulated by the existing Syllabi, require purposed efforts for the formation of intercultural business communication competencies. This research, conducted successively in the USA and Ukraine combining observational and experimental methodology, aimed at studying the influence of team learning on the development of intercultural business competencies and skills highly desired and valued by employers, such as team building and teamwork, critical thinking, decision making, conflict prevention, and resolution, etc. The results were processed by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Spanning in time from 2013 to 2020, the study proved the effectiveness of project work in learning teams for the development of intercultural competence and business communication skills. Team learning in virtual teams based on andragogical principles and methodology adapted by the authors to the needs of Ukrainian engineering students resulted in developing team building, teamwork, leadership, goal setting, planning, decision making, time management, creative and critical thinking, problem solving, conflict prevention and resolution, interpersonal and group communication and collaboration skills and competences, necessary for successful integration into the global workforce marketplace. Besides significant enhancement of intercultural business communication competencies, team learning resulted in raising Ukrainian undergraduate engineering students’ motivation towards learning ESP, engagement in group and classwork, persistence towards successful graduation and gainful employment, and overall positive learning experiences.

Studying the factors of successful acquisition of ESL speaking skills in Ukrainian adult learners, the authors focused on the correlation between emotional intelligence and development of oral communication skills, and, on the other hand, on the growth of these indicators as a result of purposeful inclusion of content-related emotions into activities aimed at the development of speaking and listening skills. Theoretically based on the ideas of emotional intelligence as an important factor in human interaction and guided by the hypothesis that content-related emotions intensify emotional involvement and have a positive influence on the acquisition of oral communication skills, the researchers applied Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test and the English Language Oral Communication Skills Test developed by the authors, to measure the key oral communication skills indicators against a 100 point scale. Experimental teaching of 124 undergraduate students of International Relations during September 2018-May 2019 proved a beneficial influence of including emotions in the learning activities on the acquisition of ESL oral communication skills, as well as on student motivation and overall quality of student experiences. Significant increments in Emotional Intelligence and ESL oral communication skills in the experimental group compared to insignificant growth of the same indicators in the Reference group allow to establish a positive correlation between the growth of emotional intelligence and acquisition of the ESL speaking skills pursuant to inclusion of content-related emotions into the ESL learning in Ukrainian students.

The research of the educators’ perspectives on online learning of undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students of public/ business administration conducted in the USA, Ukraine and a number of Asian countries, performed via mixed methodology combining qualitative (interviews and survey) and quantitative research methods, revealed general tendencies in the educators’ perceptions of losses and gains of online education. The prevalence of positive overall assessments, as well as numerous gains and opportunities for teachers and students show the prospects of online education development, specifically for working adults. The major benefits of learning online for the students include developing online communication and collaboration skills, teambuilding and teamworking skills, along with more opportunities to get education abroad without leaving their countries and interrupting jobs. For the faculty modern interactive and integrated online modality opens more opportunities for professional development as well as flexibility of schedules, savings on time and resources and ultimately better work/life balance. The analysis of problems in online learning revealed areas that require special attention of the educational institutions as well as educators, such as: creating the institutional basis for adapting the syllabi and developing new approaches to online teaching; providing the platforms for training and professional development; supporting the creation and development of multimodal instructional materials; introducing students’ learning outcomes testing methodologies which allow measuring the students’ progress and professional competences, skills and attitudes without close monitoring of their use of resources. With technological innovations, multimedia and interactive teaching tools, real-time learning tests and quizzes, online hides a huge potential for moving educational technologies and methodology to a new quality level, enriching onsite and hybrid modalities with new content and tools.

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The necessity of using innovative social technologies, and explores the concept of social entrepreneurship, which is parsed as a form of social innovations. It analyzes the concept of «social entrepreneurship» as a relatively new specific type of enterprise, and its differences from commercial entrepreneurship. It proves, that today in terms of the new model of economic development the social entrepreneurship allows, first of all, to carry out efficient change of social relations and management systems, for the sake of the growth of sociopolitical accessibility of marginalized groups to resources for provision of more qualitative satisfaction of the needs and participation in political processes; and, secondly, to save communicative integrity of social system due to the increase of social capital and possibility of choice for a social individual. It gives a characteristic of both “European” and “American” models of social entrepreneurship, as well as its peculiarities and differences. The provides the examples, how the most successful social entrepreneurs from the West contributed with the distribution of innovations, whose usefulness was rated so highly, that they were implemented on a national scale with the support of the state and business. Also, it analyzes current level of development of social entrepreneurship in Ukraine, the existing problems of creating favorable organizational, legal, economic and competitive conditions, organization and operation of different forms of social entrepreneurship, interaction between the state and public organizations, and maintenance of the development of social entrepreneurship in regions.