IT student's view on ways to improve the quality of higher education
I graduated from the second course at one of the main IT faculties of the nowadays main university in the Urals, I am satisfied with student life in all its manifestations, but I am terribly dissatisfied with some aspects of my studies. In the student community, discussion of the learning process takes a huge part of the time, especially at some lectures, so I had a lot of thoughts to form about the learning process.
There are many disciplines, for each discipline you need to attend classes, as well as independent work on the discipline. Upon completion of the study of the discipline, a highly qualified teacher checks the level of your knowledge, you get an objective assessment of your knowledge and continue learning. Upon completion of training, it is enough for an employer to see a diploma, and he will immediately learn everything about the student’s knowledge. At first glance, the system is ideal and just has to work, but not a single truly professional employer will take a student to work only by diploma, which means that the system is not working!
You can say that the inoperability of the system is due solely to fraud of students receiving high marks without receiving knowledge from the teacher, however, as my observations show, this is far from being the case. In our group there is a small subgroup of excellent students, real excellent students who honestly receive knowledge in all subjects provided by the program. They honestly teach, honestly do the tasks themselves, honestly earn their own 5. Upon completion, they will become good IT specialists. Or not, will not? But what can prevent them from becoming generalists after graduation? And the fact that generalists cannot become specialists after 4-5 years of study. And it can be clearly seen in the current program, at the end of the second course the programming discipline contains what, in my opinion, should have been studied at the beginning of the first, but no, in the first course there is an “leveling course” where the basics of Word are studied. And this story can be projected on any subject. “Does the teacher himself not know programming?” - that was my first silly thought. But then, after meeting with the teacher, I realized that most of the students could hardly assimilate even this simplest material. Moreover, the majority of the training would not have increased the total amount of training; it was incredibly difficult for me when we began to read the basics of electrical engineering. No, I'm not lazy, I just have no desire to spend time on electrical engineering, when there are a lot of ideas for applications for mobile platforms!
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The only solution that I see that would satisfy me completely is project-based training. And I see him like that. There are several areas of study, such as programming, electrical engineering, a cycle of mathematical disciplines, etc. After the first general course, the student chooses the direction of study in which the student listens to lectures, and each student is accompanied by a teacher-curator, with whom the student develops a project during the semester, and at the end of the semester defends it. Periodically, during the semester, there are seminars in which students brag about achievements. By the end of the course, the student will have a ready-made portfolio of completed projects. Actually, the work of students on projects stimulates many competitions, various scholarship programs, all except the university. The only problem that I see with this approach is the possible lack of time for the teacher-curator, but it is completely solvable, since the university has a lot of resources.
Habrasoobshchestvo, tell me, maybe somewhere such a training system has already been implemented?
And what does the learning process look like?
There are many disciplines, for each discipline you need to attend classes, as well as independent work on the discipline. Upon completion of the study of the discipline, a highly qualified teacher checks the level of your knowledge, you get an objective assessment of your knowledge and continue learning. Upon completion of training, it is enough for an employer to see a diploma, and he will immediately learn everything about the student’s knowledge. At first glance, the system is ideal and just has to work, but not a single truly professional employer will take a student to work only by diploma, which means that the system is not working!
Why is this happening?
You can say that the inoperability of the system is due solely to fraud of students receiving high marks without receiving knowledge from the teacher, however, as my observations show, this is far from being the case. In our group there is a small subgroup of excellent students, real excellent students who honestly receive knowledge in all subjects provided by the program. They honestly teach, honestly do the tasks themselves, honestly earn their own 5. Upon completion, they will become good IT specialists. Or not, will not? But what can prevent them from becoming generalists after graduation? And the fact that generalists cannot become specialists after 4-5 years of study. And it can be clearly seen in the current program, at the end of the second course the programming discipline contains what, in my opinion, should have been studied at the beginning of the first, but no, in the first course there is an “leveling course” where the basics of Word are studied. And this story can be projected on any subject. “Does the teacher himself not know programming?” - that was my first silly thought. But then, after meeting with the teacher, I realized that most of the students could hardly assimilate even this simplest material. Moreover, the majority of the training would not have increased the total amount of training; it was incredibly difficult for me when we began to read the basics of electrical engineering. No, I'm not lazy, I just have no desire to spend time on electrical engineering, when there are a lot of ideas for applications for mobile platforms!
')
So what is the solution?
The only solution that I see that would satisfy me completely is project-based training. And I see him like that. There are several areas of study, such as programming, electrical engineering, a cycle of mathematical disciplines, etc. After the first general course, the student chooses the direction of study in which the student listens to lectures, and each student is accompanied by a teacher-curator, with whom the student develops a project during the semester, and at the end of the semester defends it. Periodically, during the semester, there are seminars in which students brag about achievements. By the end of the course, the student will have a ready-made portfolio of completed projects. Actually, the work of students on projects stimulates many competitions, various scholarship programs, all except the university. The only problem that I see with this approach is the possible lack of time for the teacher-curator, but it is completely solvable, since the university has a lot of resources.
Habrasoobshchestvo, tell me, maybe somewhere such a training system has already been implemented?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/146785/
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