ИННОВАЦИОННАЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТЬ: ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНЫЕ НОВШЕСТВА В КОНТЕКСТЕ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТНОГО ПОДХОДА

Научная статья
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.6.17
Выпуск: № 2 (6), 2016
PDF

Аннотация

В статье представлена инновационная деятельность преподавателей как новшество – усовершенствование преподавания иностранных языков на основе применения сетевых технологий. При этом процесс модернизации протекает в соответствии с требованиями ФГОС, в решении задач внедрения электронного обучения и формирования общекультурных компетенций у студентов.

Pedagogical innovations methodology is a system of knowledge and activities related to the foundations and structure of pedagogical innovations creation, development and application doctrine. Teacher's innovations comprise ideas, methods, means, technologies and systems; something new, specially designed, researched, elaborately developed or accidentally discovered, new pedagogical knowledge, technology, methods, techniques.

Another system concept is innovative activity – a set of measures taken to ensure the innovation process at a given level of education, as well as the process itself. The main functions of innovation include the change of pedagogical process components: meaning, objectives, educational content, forms, methods, technologies, training tools, management systems, etc.

The innovation process is a set of procedures and means that turn the teacher discovery or idea into a social one, including educational innovation [8]. According to Khutorskiy A., educational innovation refers to the doctrine of pedagogical innovations creation, the use and application of new methods, technologies and means in practice, considered as an improvement, which means changing a known technique and its adaptation to new conditions of training activities and efficiency promotion in terms of new rules establishment for the use of known pedagogical tools to solve traditional problems in foreign language learning. In this perspective, methodological foundations of innovation activity in the teaching of foreign languages are presented in accordance with the concepts of innovation and its levels.

Let us consider the competence-based approach to education as an innovation in the learning process. In order to determine the essence of competence-based approach in education, let us analyse the concept of "competence". This word has derived from Latin and means a scope of issues a person is well aware of and has knowledge and experience related to them. According to Khutorskiy A., a person competent in a specific field has appropriate knowledge and skills enabling him/her to reasonably judge this field and effectively act in it.

Back in the 60s of XX century Zimnyaia I. established the understanding of differences between the concepts of "competency" and "competence", where the latter one was interpreted as based on knowledge, intellectual and personal experience due to social and professional human activity [3]. What is considered to be the most controversial in the designation of competence-based approach for improvement of the quality of education in Russia?

According to the definition of Khutorskiy A., competency is person's willingness to mobilize knowledge, skills, and external resources in order to act effectively in a particular situation. Competence, on the other hand, is a set of personal qualities (value orientations, knowledge, skills, and abilities), ability to work in a particular personally significant area.

In the book "Modernization Strategy of Basic Education" published by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation they formulated fundamental principles of competence-based approach in education, the pivotal notion of which is competence. It was emphasized that this concept is broader than the concept of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA). The authors describe "competence" as a concept that combines intellectual and scientific components of education, continuing to expand it in the following areas:

- the concept of competence includes not only cognitive, operational and technological components, but also motivational, ethical, social and behavioral ones; it includes learning outcomes (knowledge and skills), the system of value orientations, habits, etc.;

– competence refers to the ability to mobilize acquired knowledge, skills, experience and ways of behaving in a particular situation, specific activity;

– the concept of competence implies content interpretation of education, formed on the basis of the result ("standard outcome");

– competencies are formed both during the learning process at school and under the influence of the environment;

– competence as an independent cognitive activity, based on the adoption of different ways of acquiring knowledge from a variety of sources, including extra-curricular ones;

– competence in the field of civil and social activities (performing the roles of citizens, voters, consumers);

– competence in the social field and employment, including the ability to analyse the situation on labor market, assess their own professional skills, understand the rules and ethics of relationships, self-organisation skills;

– competence in the household sphere, including aspects of health, family life, etc.;

– competence in the field of cultural and leisure activities, including the choice of ways and means of free time use, that can culturally and spiritually enrich the personality [6].

In 2003 Khutorskiy A. published his monograph "Didactic Heuristics. Theory and Technology of Training ", which focuses on the original scientific-pedagogical concept of heuristic learning. Students are invited to discover knowledge, compare it with cultural and historical analogies, building an individual trajectory of education, while the process of key competencies forming still continues [9].

The monograph by Smolyaninova O. "Competence-Based Approach in Teacher's Training in the Context of Using Media" published in 2006 in Krasnoyarsk makes an attempt to understand current models of competence-based approach application in higher education. The content of the book is based on the Russian and international experience concerning the modernization of education in the framework of competence-based approach and is founded on theoretical and practical studies, carried out by the author in 2000-2006. [7].

The same year another monograph by Vostrikov A. "Fundamentals of Competence-Based Approach Theory and Technology in High-Class School: Author's Model" was published. The book discloses the theory and technology of competence-based approach to educational process in grammar schools. It discloses the mechanisms for the implementation of this approach in productive textbooks and in the productive didactic cycle based on the examples of creative tasks system [2].

In his article "Problems and Prospects of Competence-Based Approach Implementation in Education" Bermus A. proposes measures that can be taken for the implementation of competence-based approach into practice, relevant to the overall objectives of the Russian education modernization [1]. Kaverina I. in her article "Implementation of Competence-Based Approach in Secondary School Classroom" states that in our changing world, the education system should generate such new qualities of a graduate as initiative, innovation, mobility, flexibility, dynamism. [4].

Based on the analysis of the abovementioned works the researchers identify three principles that underlie competence-based approach:

The first principle runs as follows: basic knowledge and relevant skills and ways of learning should be at the heart of education. To achieve this, students have to master basic learning tools, namely, reading, writing and mathematical literacy.

The second principle: the content of education must be comprised of really important and necessary, but not secondary knowledge. The education system should be academic in nature and focus on the basic branches of science. The attention of school should be focused on what has been tested by time and what comprises the basis of education.

The third principle is the principle of humane treatment of the individual. Another feature of the competence-based approach is that it involves simultaneous acquisition of knowledge and skills. Therefore, the system of teaching methods is built anew, since it is based on the structure of relevant competence and the function it performs in education [9].

The statement of Zimnyaia A. that competence is interpreted as something based on knowledge, intellectually and personally predetermined experience of social and professional human life, fully complies with the requirements for the implementation of the terms of main educational bachelor programs based on FSES (Federal State Education Standards). One of them is the widespread use of active and interactive forms of conducting a lesson in the educational process in order to form and develop professional skills of students.

Below there is an example of new (network) technologies and methods application in foreign language teaching for improvement and modernization in order to adapt existing techniques to the new environment of learning activity. Considered technologies (multimedia, network, etc.) require the change of methods and ways of traditional teaching and improvement of the overall educational process. Thus, new conditions of educational activity are created, where the key thing is not just the knowledge of a foreign language, but also the metasubject background knowledge and skills used to solve current problems relying on universal learning activities.

The use of computer technology in the teaching of foreign languages can provide access to necessary information resources and create a new educational space, activate teaching and cognitive activity of students, improve learning efficiency and interest in all aspects of language teaching including cultural study.

In this regard, it is important to pay special attention to e-learning environment called Moodle, which has become one of the most popular platforms around the world within the last five years and is considered to be the best. According to statistics provided by the Moodle official website, today there are 1416 units of the system in the Russian Federation, 519 of them are installed on private computers. At the same time all over the world, there are nearly 69 thousand registered sites on the Moodle platform in 235 countries [Official site of the e-learning environment Moodle]. The word Moodle is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.

Moodle system is a software package for creating distance learning courses and web-sites. For greater reliability we provide a list of its main advantages, including basic didactic ones:

- the system is designed with regard to the achievements of modern pedagogy, with an emphasis on the interaction between students (discussion);

- its design is modular and can be easily modified;

- plugged language packages can help to achieve complete localization (the system currently supports 43 languages);

- students can edit their accounts, add photos and change numerous personal data and details;

- there is a rich set of component-modules for courses - Chat, Poll, Forum, Glossary, Workbook, Lesson, Test, Profile, Scorm, Survey, Wiki, Seminar, Resources (in the form of text or web pages, or in the form of a directory) and many others.

While preparing and conducting classes in Moodle system a teacher uses a set of module-components for courses. Varying combinations of different elements of the course, the teacher organizes the process study in a way that makes forms of education consistent with the objectives and tasks of specific occupations. Let us look at them in more detail:

1) glossary – allows you to organize work with terms; new entries can be created by both teachers and students. Terms listed in the glossary are highlighted in all course materials and can be hyperlinked to relevant articles of the glossary. The system allows you to create a glossary of the course, as well as the global glossary available to participants of all courses;

2) resource – any materials for self-study, study, discussion: text, illustration, web-page, audio or video files, etc. To create web-pages there is an embedded visual editor that allows a teacher who does not know HTML markup to easily create web-pages with formatting, images, tables;

3) task – a kind of student activity, the result of which is usually the creation and uploading to the server of a file in any format or the creation of text directly in the Moodle system. A teacher can quickly check files and texts uploaded by a student, comment on them and, if necessary, suggest modifying them in some areas. If a teacher deems it necessary, (s)he can open links to the files provided by course participants and make these works the subject of discussion in the forum. Such a scheme is very convenient, for example, for creative courses. If this is allowed by a teacher, each student can submit files repeatedly – after they have been checked. This allows a teacher to quickly adjust the work of a learner, to achieve complete fulfillment of educational problems. All text files created in the system and uploaded to the server by students are stored in portfolio;

4) forum is aimed for academic discussion of issues and for consultation. Forums can be used to upload files by students – in this case, you can build educational discussions around these files, enable students to peer-assess each other's work. When adding a new forum a teacher has the opportunity to choose its type: usual forum with a discussion of one theme, common forum available for everyone or forum with one discussion thread for each user. Messages from the forum can, if the teacher decides to, be automatically sent by e-mail to students within 30 minutes after they are added (during this time a message can be edited or deleted). All student forum messages are stored in the portfolio. Moodle supports a very useful function of text collective editing ("Wiki" element of the course);

5) lecture – allows you to organize step by step study of educational material. An array of materials can be divided into didactic units, at the end of each, there is a quiz to check your comprehension. The system adjusted by a teacher will ensure that the student will be transferred to the next level of study or to return to the previous one based on the results of monitoring. This element of the course is convenient because it allows the evaluation of student’s work in automatic mode: the teacher only defines the parameters for the evaluation system, after which the system automatically displays the total of each student for a lecture and records it;

6) tests – can contain different types of questions: closed ones in the form of questions (multiple choice), random questions, numeric, with yes/no answers; with short answers, with an attached response, tasks to find correspondences and others. Test questions are stored in a database and can be reused in the same or different courses. Students can get several tries to pass the test. It is possible to set a time limit to finish the test. A teacher can give a mark on the results of the test or just show correct answers to the test.

It must be emphasized that using e-learning environment Moodle allows you to study at your own pace, providing freedom and flexibility, ensuring the availability of resources and the Internet, its mobility is effective implementation of the idea of feedback between teacher and student, and it also creates favorable conditions for creative self-learning.

One of the main tasks a teacher faces is proper organization of educational process. When developing a curriculum a teacher should:

1) form a teaching course base: identify the main and additional educational materials, and electronic resources both for classroom and extracurricular work;

2) determine which types of speech activity and exercises will be done in the classroom, and which by students on their own. In particular, when studying a foreign language it is necessary to give exercises for independent work during extracurricular time, because, on the one hand, they are time-consuming to be done at the lesson and on the other – students of senior courses have learning skills which formed well enough and the ability to work with different types of exercises. These include imitative, substitution exercises, transformation tasks, expansion (contraction) of the sentences, selection of analogues, filling the gaps, designing phrases on the basis of structural elements and others. Students perform exercises on the Moodle platform independently, which helps the teacher to moderate learning process in a timely manner, give advice concerning tasks, as well as track and monitor independent activities of students. Work in the classroom involves communicative activities mainly, so students mostly work with speech exercises to develop productive skills, speaking ones in particular. Speech exercises include question-answer, drills, role-plays, retelling, dramatization, description, discussion, oral stories;

3) assessment and self-assessment of students. Moodle e-learning environment can be a motivating factor itself, allowing you to make educational process available to everyone, to logically structure all its stages and to organize the assessment of students [11]. After tuning the process of performing tasks on the platform, students quickly become accustomed to the fact that their activities are regularly monitored by the teacher. The platform allows a teacher to know who has really done the activities before the class and who is ready for productive independent work in class. This is another motivating factor for the students. They know what problems they face and how to achieve a specific result. Oral presentation or a small research project can become a form of summative assessment that allows students to demonstrate their professional, communicative, language and other competencies.

Summarising everything that has been said we can claim with a high degree of certainty that Moodle platform is a modern comfortable learning electronic environment that focuses on students needs and enhances their intrinsic motivation as a primary way of organizing teaching and as a form of communication between a teacher and a student, close to partnership. The use of virtual learning platform Moodle in foreign language teaching contributes to the efficiency of the process and is, of course, very promising for the formation of students' competencies related to the use of a foreign language in their future careers.

Thus, the competence-based approach is an approach that implements the activity-based approach to education where learning process is focused on practical results. This does not imply the refusal from knowledge needed as a basis for action. Therefore, the notion of "competence" appeared in training and education theory and means the ability to mobilize acquired knowledge, skills, experience and ways of behaving in a particular situation, specific activity, i.e. in teaching foreign languages.

The above mentioned universal learning activities of students are executed in entirely new on-line conditions – in the educational environment of a network technology. Didactic capabilities of the system allow the teacher and the students to be active participants of Moodle educational platform that will eventually lead to the modernization of educational process as a whole.

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