Abstracts:

The tendencies for development of society towards building an information society determine the changes in priorities in the sphere of university education, and transition to training of interdisciplinary-educated specialists in particular. University graduates are required to have, besides fundamental knowledge in the field of specialization, knowledge in fringe areas and clear understanding of ways for application of information technologies and software to solve their professional tasks. The specialist''s requisition on the labor market directly depends on his/her abilities for adaptation in changing environment and specialty requirements, as well as for adopting new knowledge, technologies, software.

Traditional views on humanitarian and engineering specialties and their differences become obsolete. At present, specialists in humanities working in the field of development of information resources for libraries, museums and other organizations in cultural sphere, as well as those involved in design process practically in any field, are required to have higher, than a user one, level of knowledge in information technologies and software. Besides this, knowledge in information science and programming, in understanding of intrinsic mechanisms for software applications design and operation are important.

The paper considers approaches towards teaching the course on development of multimedia applications for future media designers in the State University of Culture and Arts. A special attention is paid to the problems of teaching the basics for multimedia programs design and programming in authoring environments (by example of Macromedia Director) for creation of complex interactive applications both for CD-ROM and Internet. The experience of using information technologies for support of educational process, including introduction of distance assessment technologies for confirmation of acquired knowledge and skills and for intermediate control of learners is described.