The relevance of using social projects in the process of students’ training is due to the fact that active interaction in the “student-social environment”, “student-teacher”, “student-student” modes in collective and individual social projects enables each student to develop systemic and critical thinking, team-work skills and leader qualities, as well as communication and intercultural interaction skills. The article discusses the experience of implementing socially significant projects, namely the implementation of ideas for the improvement of the city Biysk environment by means of environmental and graphic design projects, made by the students of Shukshin Altay State University for Humanities and Pedagogy (Biysk, Altay region). These projects were created as part of students’ educational and extracurricular activities, in connection with this, the authors made an analysis of the differences in the stages of their implementation: 1) pre-project analysis stage; 2) the design stage; 3) project defense stage; 4) implementation stage. Further, the authors presented a description of projects carried out by students in a collective and individual form in 2018–2019, on the topics «Biysk — I Know! I Love! I am Proud» and «Biysk fortress. Windows of time». The necessary level criteria for the implementation of a collective and individual project are identified by the authors. The significance of simulation modeling and the formation of universal competence in the process of working on the mentioned projects are justified.

Keywords: universal competencies, competence, universality, result, social project, imitation pedagogical modeling, design project.