Keywords
DevOps
digital education
cloud services
digital literacy
How to Cite
Abstract
This article investigates how the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT), with a focus on DevOps methodologies, can transform the educational process within higher education institutions to better prepare students for working in modern IT teams. The study aims to quantify and qualitatively evaluate the effect of DevOps tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins and AWS/Google Cloud/Azure cloud services on developing key professional competencies such as teamwork, critical thinking and digital literacy.
As part of the experimental approach, two groups of 30 students each took a course incorporating DevOps practices or traditional teaching without a DevOps component. A mixed methodology was employed, comprising a Likert questionnaire (α = 0.82) to evaluate satisfaction with the learning process, digital literacy and self-evaluation of team skills, as well as an analysis of CI/CD technical metrics (build time and percentage of successful launches) and repository activity.
The results show that implementing the DevOps approach increased the average satisfaction score from 3.2 ± 0.7 to 4.1 ± 0.6 (p < 0.01) and improved digital literacy (from 2.8 ± 0.8 to 4.0 ± 0.5) and teamwork self-assessment (from 3.0 ± 0.6 to 4.2 ± 0.4, p < 0.05). Technical build time was reduced by 35%, while the success rate of CI/CD pipelines increased from 78% to 92%. Concurrently, the number of repositories doubled, indicating increased student engagement.
The most significant challenges were the lack of digital literacy among teachers and the complexity of setting up the CI/CD infrastructure initially (cited by 20%-15% of respondents). Based on the obtained data, the following recommendations for optimising educational programmes were developed: introducing teacher training courses; creating template laboratory stands with pre-configured DevOps tools; and implementing practical tasks in phases with the support of mentors.
These findings confirm that systematically applying ICT and DevOps methodologies in higher education contributes to producing competitive specialists who can work effectively in the context of digital transformation and the globalisation of the IT market.
References
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