Švietimas: politika, vadyba, kokybė /Education Policy, Management and Quality

7-18

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas, Dalia Augienė, Rita Makarskaitė-Petkevičienė

The problems of higher university education are not only urgent but, it can be asserted, that due to many reasons they are getting sharper. The dynamism of labour market and always changing society require flexible, innovative and creative lifelong learning possibilities; higher education institutions do not limit themselves to primary preparation of specialists, the possibili-ties ought to be found for the development of specialists and professionals, for specialisation change, for the development of personal abilities and for expansion of high level professional competences. Continuing education at universities is becoming more and more urgent in the Strategic priorities of European education. It is necessary to seek for high scientific activity and high study level and for the results acknowledged on an international level. On the other hand, the competition among universities is evidently getting stronger both on national and internatio-nal levels. Very often blind orientation only to a consumer (a student), only to service provision to him, make the quality of studies and at the same time the quality of acquirable education worse. The solution of any problem requires reliable and adequate information. The researches, regarding university students’ opinions on higher education problems do not lose their urgency. On the contrary, in this way rather objective primary information about processes taking place in this sector is obtained. The empiric research (N=544), carried out in January-February 2012, showed that student opinions on higher university education are controversial, in fact. Having carried out content analysis on the respondents’ expressed positions, considerable advantages and disadvantages of university studies were discerned. Education acquisition and good study quality are pointed out as the most important uni-versity education advantages. These positions have relatively the biggest weight among all cate-gories defining the advantages. Self-realisation and career possibilities occupy the middle posi-tion in the advantage category scale. Their weight fluctuates in the interval of 10-20 percent. Communication possibilities and study management are not regarded as considerable advanta-ges. It has been stated, that a considerable shortage of university education is study quality. One third of the respondents gave the biggest weight to that category. It can be asserted, that study quality and conditions for practical ability formation in the study process worry the res-pondents most. Evaluating study quality, the respondents most often express dissatisfaction with the overloading of the study content: a lot of insignificant subjects must be studied, too many unnecessary lectures, inexpedient lectures, poor lectures, worthless; a lot of unnecessary study programmes and so on. A part of respondents accentuate dissatisfaction with the teachers’ work: poor competence of some teachers, unfair student evaluation, the requirements raised are too high. It can be asserted, that university studies are more often understood as experience pro-cess, during which theoretical and practical knowledge are integrated and on this basis profes-sional experience is acquired and professionalism is mastered.

26-34

Authors: Marat Akhmetov

Web education today is becoming increasingly popular. More and more students use the Web for searching information about substances and chemical reactions, but only little part of websites users is able to achieve success in learning chemistry. Free web education has both advantages and disadvantages. Students can study at their own pace and at a convenient time, but they need ability to do exercises without teachers’ support. Our research let us understand what a web teacher can do for students’ success in learning chemistry. It is hard to study chemistry for many students, because chemistry is a special part of human knowledge. For success in learning chemistry students must have amount of chemical knowledge. Students should understand chemical phenomenon, chemical formulas, and structures of substances. They should have ability to solve chemical problems. We studied educational materials on the most popular Russian-language chemical education websites. Results and discussion are presented in this paper. It has shown what educational websites should publish useful chemical information for students. They should have opportunity to answer any chemical questions and discuss chemical problems with other users. A Web teacher must put information on a website which can improve students’ interest in chemistry. Chemical information should relate life situations, a history of chemistry, mass-media and other sides of human life. Web teacher should put multimedia chemical information, not only formulas, equation, but pictures, audio and video on a website. This information is very interested for students and prepares their chemical knowledge and their success. As a result of useful and interested information they should want to visit a website again.