V.D. Povzun, professor, Dr.Hab.
A.A. Povzun, associate professor, Ph.D.
V.V. Apokin, associate professor, Ph.D.
O.V. Bulgakova
Surgut state university, Surgut

Key words: educational process, quality of education, independent work of students, rating system, biorhythmological approach.

The competences of the prospective specialist, competitive in the present labor market environment, should be formed based on the students' knowledge of fundamental disciplines, being the core of university education. The process of acquisition of necessary knowledge is a complicated task both for students themselves and for teachers. Solution of this task consists, first of all, in development of students’ creative skills during the whole learning process, increase of their intellectual potential, activity and independence [1, 2]. Despite the process of teaching and forming students’ educational competences traditionally associated with different methods of the knowledge transfer and, ultimately, only the independent work of students and monitoring of its performance in case of appropriate organization contributes to formation of their skill of independent thinking and the creative approach to solution of problems in education and life.

The purpose of the study was to prove the expedience of introducing the rating system in view of the biorhythmological approach.

Results and discussion. The control of knowledge level obtained by students can be rather traditional. In this case the quality of lecture notes (usually it is not useful), the accuracy and quality of laboratory works, the skills of working with equipment, the abilities to observe, perform necessary calculations, describe and analyze results, form conclusions according to experimental results, and use catalogues and handbooks, etc. are examined and estimated. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the quality of studies significantly increases when rating system of control is applied, since this system allows systematic and differential estimation of all student activities, and helps students to distribute their workload reasonably both by time and kinds of activity to achieve best result, i.e. to implement students’ freedom of choice.

The expediency of this approach is based, first of all, on the long-term practice of higher-school education in the world, and on the experience of numerous Russian experts that have proved high efficiency of the rating system of knowledge estimation in the higher-school education. The efficiency of the system proposed by us for the estimation of students’ knowledge of physiology at the department of physical education was confirmed by psychological and pedagogic investigations, particularly in A.V. Sal’kov’s Ph.D. thesis [5]. A.V. Sal’kov established that implementation of the rating system in the educational process is an efficient way to raise students’ motivation and create conditions for success. This result, in our opinion, is especially important for sports departments where the educational process with such an approach is particularly reasonable, since student-athletes have highly-developed competitive qualities, such as ardor, aspiration for achievement of high results, persistence, diligence, ability to concentrate in crucial moments; which contribute to significant enhancement of the learning process and its quality.

The rating system of knowledge control has several advantages if the quality education needs to be enhanced along with health protection. It is no secret that athletes spend most of class hours at competitions, training camps and other sports events, so they cannot attend classes regularly; therefore, it is particularly important to organize for them an individual learning process under the conditions of the rating control system. First of all, because this system not only enables a student to choose the most convenient and interesting for him (her) learning activities, but, what is especially important, the student can determine the accomplishment period. Thus, students develop their ability to work individually with various information sources and they have no psychological problems caused by the necessity to strictly follow the curriculum requirements; in addition, students learn to choose and organize their educational process by themselves. A correct organization of learning process, the choice of optimal terms for preparation and fulfillment of both semester and current tasks estimated using various control options can significantly affect the students’ academic performance.

The problem is that the present standard curriculum in the absolute majority of higher schools provides strict connection of any form of learning activity, and particularly its control, to certain dates, that is reasonable from the standpoint of a standard organization of educational process. However, this situation brings a lot of difficulties to students of sports departments, and possibly to other students that practice sports actively, i.e. students whose personal schedule is strictly related to various sports events and accompanying event activities. Administration is not enthusiastic about the attempts to organize a flexible schedule of repeated examination of previously failed students, though de facto, such schedules are common practice, and reasonable scientific arguments in favour of a flexible schedule for learning regimes are practically absent.

As we have already showed [4], consideration of man’s individual rhythms, i.e. cyclic fluctuations of students’ intellectual, physical, and emotional activities [5], can significantly, and harmlessly, enhance the organization of the learning process. Proceeding from our results, we believe that the hypothesis of three rhythms, despite its vulnerability, can serve as a weighty argument in favor of the individual approach not only to the schedule of semester examinations, but to any other learning activity for both athletes and students of other specialties. Moreover, we can claim with full confidence that such a rhythmologic approach will contribute not only to more optimal organization of athletes’ workload distribution during learning, but also improve education quality in general. All the more, as the new concept of higher school educational standards is based on the ideas of a systematic activity approach when the efficiency of a student and a teacher, higher school educational process as a whole, is determined first of all by the quality of the environment within which the activity is being carried out, therefore it would be wrong not to consider biorhythmological factors.

It is worthwhile to note that nowadays there is a common practice in some countries, when a student can be examined inn some disciplines in a certain period of time according to a flexible schedule, so using the opportunities of block-modular learning and the principle of academic freedom which delegates him or her not only the responsibility for the content of the curriculum and the quality of its implementation, but also an opportunity to agree the fulfillment of that curriculum with the university administration, including the terms of examinations and tests.

Taking into account the possibilities and conditions, we believe that a particular organization of individual work and rating control system are especially important for the department of physical culture, where students spend a lot of their class hours in training camps and competitions, i.e. during this period of time they are excluded from the standard scheduled-themed learning process.

First of all, lectures can not be included into the control system due to students’ frequent leaving for various sports events, whereas laboratory works, being a basis for physiological studies, are highly recommended. Physiology is an experimental science, and lab works on all the topics of the course are the major learning activity. Accomplishment of each laboratory work is included into the rating control system when the skills of laboratory work, experimental skills, and abilities to analyze results and form a comprehensive conclusion are estimated by a particular scale.

All forms of individual work are fulfilled in accordance with a particular tutorial which contains not only methodologies of lab works planned, but also rather extensive theoretical materials on a discipline, that is necessary for students to understand the essence of the laboratory work.

The same theoretical material, along with the textbook content, is the basis for introductory control, enabling fast and qualitative estimation of a student’s readiness for a laboratory work. Pre-test interview is among the most effective methods of control used to examine the whole group of students within a short period of time. The introductory tests were developed for each laboratory work and included fifteen questions of various types on the foundations of the laboratory subject.

The introductory control is well incorporated into the rating system of students’ knowledge control, since every test task is estimated in points. The introductory control is considered to be passed if a student got not less than 60% of the maximum number of points for the whole test. Those students who got less points are either not allowed to the laboratory work at all or allowed to accomplish this work in additional time. In the latter, different forms of test tasks are proposed, and their accomplishment is estimated by a lower number of points.

The points received during both the introductory tests and the laboratory works are the main, but not exclusive components of the rating. Home work on the disciplines studied at classes is an important form of individual work too. Series of questions are formed for each laboratory work, and special time is allocated for discussions on these questions at weekly student consultations. Theoretical discussions on these questions are not compulsory; nevertheless, such discussions can help best prepared students to significantly raise their rating in the discipline. The same form of control is used for students who have failed to get enough points at primary tests, or who for some reasons were absent at the laboratory work and lectures.

Having regard to the peculiarities of the physical education department, it should be mentioned that typically there is a number of students absent at lab works or lectures. A particular system of individual learning on all topics of physiology was developed for those persons who are off in long-term training camps or competitions. This system includes an optional simple laboratory work that does not need special equipment or conditions, a practical task concerning analysis of a physiological law or dependence, and several problems. A student gets such a test before his or her departure, and reports on it after arrival. The accomplishment of all tests on all missed topics is scored up according to the rating and does not need additional work.

Another form of individual work is the semester tasks that are fulfilled by students during a semester and reported as soon as completed. Those tasks may by mandatory, for example they could be control works aimed at the examination of students’ theoretical background in the topics not included into laboratory works for some reason. Using control works one can estimate not only the level of theoretical knowledge, but also the skills to describe it in the written form, find additional literature on the topic and use it, and the ability to distinguish the most important issues. The accomplishment of control work is a mandatory task for every student.

Solving situational problems on the topics studied is an optional, but important semester task. The ability to solve such problems shows a good level of knowledge, however, no time is left to develop this ability within the laboratory work. Thus, situational problems were developed for each topic, and students solve them individually and have exams when the studies of the topic are over. Accuracy of the solutions is then discussed at consultations. Correctly solved problems are estimated by a certain number of points, and those points are included into the whole rating.

Conclusion. Thanks to the fulfillment of all kinds of individual work, either as a whole or partially, students can master a discipline more thoroughly and completely, acquire preliminary professional skills and increase considerably their educational rating; while a teacher gets an opportunity to use various methods for encouraging student at examination. We assume that the use of the rating system for assessment of students’ knowledge is an efficient method of enhancement of learning motivation, quality of knowledge, and the educational competence of future specialists.

References

1. Kuznetsov, Yu.F. Human biorhythms: physical, emotional, intellectual / Yu.F. Kuznetsov. – Amrita-Rus’, 2006. – 384 P. (In Russian)
2. Povzun, V.D. Capabilities of the university educational environment in developing the creative potential of sports faculty students / V.D. Povzun, A.A. Povzun, V.V. Apokin // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury. – 2013. – № 1 – P. 94-95. (In Russian)
3. Povzun, V.D. The comparative analysis and ways of development of students’ creative potential in the university educational environment / V.D. Povzun, A.A. Povzun, V.V. Apokin // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury. – 2013 – № 7 – P. 87-91. (In Russian)
4. Povzun, V.D. The role of registration of biorhythms in enhancement of the academic performance of university students / V.D. Povzun, A.A. Povzun, V.V. Apokin, A.V. Sal’kov // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury. – 2013. – № 4 – P. 86-88. (In Russian)
5. Sal’kov, A.V. Educational conditions of development of the achievement motivation in university students: abstract of Ph.D. thesis / A.V. Sal’kov. – Orenburg, 2002. – 20 P. (In Russian)

Author’s contacts: apokin_vv@mail.ru