ASSESSMENT OF UNIVERSAL COMPETENCIES OF STUDENTS

Assessing the competencies of students is an important and challenging task. The article presents the experience of evaluating the universal competencies of students. We created individual and group exercises, criteria for evaluating the results of these exercises for assessing the universal competencies of students. In addition to expert evaluation, students were interviewed to identify their self-esteem. The created assessment tools were used for several years at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Pskov State University to assess the universal competencies of first year students (more than 200 students participated). Some research results are analyzed in the article

ON THE FORMATION OF STUDENT’S E-PORTFOLIO

Student-oriented approach in education has received a comprehensive description in numerous works of Russian and foreign researchers and continues to evolve rapidly. The implementation of student-oriented approach, the information and methodological support of students throughout the training period are the most effective when used of electronic information-educational environment of high school. The purpose of this article is to analyze the possibilities of using electronic information-educational university environment of university for the formation of an e-portfolio of achievements. The following methods were used during the research: analysis of the scientific literature on the issue of research, experimental teaching, questioning. Long-term researches in the field of quality and competence-oriented approach to education, which are conducted by the authors, allowed to develop and test two approaches to the formation of a student’s e-portfolio: by learning outcomes or by type of activity. This paper will present the structure of student’s e-portfolio, a brief description of its elements, as well as experience of creating e-portfolios by students of the Pskov State University. We share the view that the e-portfolio is an expression of qualitative and multi-level assessment of competencies, measuring individual progress of students, self-presentation for employers. The formation of an e-portfolio contributes to the implementation of student-oriented approach, it’s an important element of the competence-oriented approach to education. Electronic information-educational university environment of university allows to realize all this.

ON THE READINESS OF FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS FOR PROJECT-ORIENTED TRAINING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The training of a graduate with project thinking is one of the trends in modern higher education. Specialist with soft skills is in demand by society. The formation of soft skills is facilitated by using project technologies in training. In this regard, it seems important to identify the level of readiness of freshmen to project-oriented training.The purpose of this article is to analyze the readiness of first-year students of the Institute of Mathematical Modeling and Game Practice of Pskov State University for project-oriented study at a university. The research used the following methods: analysis of the scientific literature on the research problem, observation, expert evaluation, questioning, and statistical analysis of the results. In the process of research, (a) the need for an input assessment of freshmen readiness for project activities was substantiated, (b) the components of students' readiness for project-oriented training were identified, (c) the selected components were evaluated during the training project carried out by freshmen, (d) the results were analyzed.

OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF LASER-COLOURING MARKED STAINLESS STEEL

Laser colour-marking method often displace conventional marking techniques. Complicated technology of laser-induced periodic surface structure creation on stainless steel samples allows changing their surface morphology and optical properties, which were studied in this work by atomic force microscopy (AFM), laser scanning microscopy, reflectance spectroscopy and ellipsometry. Reflectance spectra of the samples demonstrate reflectance maxima correlate with the visible colours of the samples and with the extrema in the non-monotonic spectral dependences of the derivative of real part of complex dielectric permittivity extracted from the ellipsometric data. Thus, the most intensive light scattering takes place when the real part of complex dielectric permittivity falls down quickly with changing wavelength. We did not observe any “azimuth anisotropy” in our optical measurements at constant incidence angle: the spectra were the same independently of the light incidence plane orientation (parallel or perpendicular to the previous laser light spot scanning direction). We suppose that this selective resonance-like light scattering is due to the sample surface inhomogeneity, which is the result of previous laser treatment. This assumption agrees with estimations based on laser microscope and AFM images as well as with predictions of Mie theory. Thus, the colours of the samples under study are due to the light scattering by randomly distributed surface species with different sizes.