A modern school deals with a generation of students who were born and grown up in a digital environment and require other teaching methods. Changes in the technological and social conditions of modern society need new professional skills, which are often called “21st century skills”. These skills should be devel-oped starting from the primary school, as they are psychological and behavioural, rather than practical. Game-based learning and gamification are effective means of such skills development. The use of video games in teaching practice is studied multifaceted, along with formats and requirements of educational game, methods for effectiveness assessment, and the effect of games on students. The controver-sial nature of game-based learning effect on students require deeper research, as the increase in motivation and learning efficiency cannot be disputed, as well as the negative impact of a long gaming on cognitive abilities, emotional state and social skills of students. The study tested both an increase in the motivation and attraction of school students for the learning process, and the impact on the prac-tical results of information assimilation. There was conducted a survey on the re-sults of the application of game training to determine the motivation and attraction of students. Likewise, we counted time, spent by the study and control group, for mastering the main educational material and the post-class study of game content and the educational material it presents. A comparative test was conducted on the results of educational material comprehension to determine the effectiveness of the methodology in mastering knowledge. The group, with game-based learning and gamification applied, showed an increase in motivation and attraction to learning, students paid additional efforts for assimilating the material studied, and also showed significantly higher learning outcomes compared to the control group.

STEM education has become the normative base for teaching natural sciences, physical-mathematical disciplines and engineering sciences in a number of coun-tries. This technique has become the basis for a series of reforms for secondary and higher education in the USA, Australia, and some other countries. The meth-od involves the integration of training in the fields of mathematics, technical spe-cialties, scientific research and engineering. The widespread use of this technique and its active research throughout the world over the past ten years is due to the need to improve the quality of technical education and the ever-increasing rate of technological progress. This research is devoted to studying the impact of the STEM education introduction for 3rd year students of technical and pedagogical departments for improving the quality of training. The study involved two groups of students from two universities in Russia and China. The sample consisted of 316 people from each university, and the same amount was for control group to verify the results. The two study groups underwent training using two different STEM methodologies - “amalgam” and “interconnect”, which involve varying degrees of integration of various academic subjects within the coordinated STEM education. Both study groups used online-education integrated with STEM that helped to significantly increase the involvement of students in the learning pro-cess. All three groups passed pre-tests and post-tests on the learning outcomes before and after the introduction of the STEM education. The average grades re-ceived by students on studied disciplines show that the STEM education increas-es the academic performance with the statistical error of the study exceeded. The introduction of the “interconnect” method, which implies a greater integration of subjects during the training, showed provably higher results than the “amalgam” method. However, this study cannot be used to assess the quality and capabilities of each of these methods, since such an assessment requires additional research.