Independent Work and Its Control in the Context of Improving University Education

Abstract

The paper considers some areas of improving students' independent work and its control, in particular, the compatibility of students' independent work at the university, aimed at developing new skills among young people, in which much is assigned to planning this activity, managing it and exercising control over it, with the innovative nature of modern education. In the general problem of the organization of independent work of students, a significant place is occupied by the forms and methods of its control, the purpose of which is to activate the student's work, educating him to be responsible for his product of intellectual labor. The authors consider in detail the task of using the information received to manage the educational process, including the process of self-study of students, offering their own version of the system of organizing and monitoring the success of students' independent work. An indispensable condition for the implementation of such a system for monitoring students' independent work ("micro-credits") is the availability of sufficiently reliable information about the complexity of all tasks that a student is required to complete during the semester. Without this, the system does not work, as does the system for monitoring current academic performance without coordinating it with the accepted methodology of training sessions. The authors noted that in the proposed system, only the part of independent work that is associated with mandatory tasks is controlled. The following methods were used to determine the actual time spent on students' independent work on the implementation of its individual elements: expert assessments of teachers on the complexity of individual elements; determination of actual time spent by monitoring students' independent work in the presence of a teacher (during extracurricular time); self-photographing of independent studies by students; experimental determination by teachers of their own time spent on the implementation of individual elements of student independent work. The article shows the results of the analysis of the complexity of the main evaluation tools of the independent work of a student, as well as the average time spent on one element of independent work. The basic requirements for the formation of a system for monitoring the performance of mandatory tasks are given.