EXPERIENCE WITH A STUDENT’S WORKBOOK ON PERSONALITY

Student’s workbook is a teaching guide of new educational genre of educational literature which sets a new way of students’ teaching. Today student’s workbook is an integral part of educational-methodical complex on different branches of learning. It’s a peculiar supplement to the main text-book on discipline.

Workbooks are individual in their orientation because they are addressed to each student personally. Workbooks are the most mobile genre among all existing genres of educational literature. They are the first to respond to any needs of high school and, at the same time, they form these needs. A workbook contains a special educational motivation. Its whole design, tasks and questions are aimed to “co-authorship” and “co-creation”.

We worked out and tested a student’s workbook on discipline “Psychology of Personality”. In order to learn and check students’ knowledge effectively, this workbook should be used jointly with a text-book on “Psychology of Personality” that was also prepared and issued by the author.

The workbook provides auditorium and individual work support for students, studying “Psychology of Personality” discipline in the network of lectures and practicals. The workbook includes educational tasks aimed at in-depth learning of the studied discipline content, at development of skills of psychological knowledge free use in practical sphere, at stimulation of the students’ research activity. The student’s workbook contains methodological instructions and comments on tasks fulfillment, it also gives the keys at the end.

The workbook is an instrument of a student who can not only read it, but just exactly work with it. It makes the process of teaching easier because it allows to check students’ work and the level of understanding of the given material. The workbook on “Psychology of Personality” discipline helps the students to organize optimally their individual work on the discipline, to systematize and to optimize their educational, research and creative work on the discipline studying, and to save time and forces for creative work on self-development and self-realization.

The student’s workbook includes three main blocks: informational - theoretical, creative - practical and diagnostic - reflexive. The informational - theoretical block makes for mastering of the main notions of Psychology of Personality. It includes a terminological vocabulary and pattern-organizer - tables and schemes, reflecting the main theoretical content of studied item in a brief and graphic form. Working with vocabulary, filling in tables and putting down different diagrams, students understand the essence of the main notions.

Creative - practical block includes a questionnaire and a case-study. Students need to give brim-full and well-grounded answers to the questions, and on the basis of the concrete situation description make analysis and diagnostics of the psychological problem and work the way of its solution. The tasks of the creative - practical block will help the students to prepare effectively for seminars and practicals and to use their psychological knowledge in practice. Diagnostic - reflexive block includes tests and tasks that help students in their self-knowledge and self-development.

Thereby, the technology of work with a student’s workbook presupposes an alteration of individual student’s work. The workbook allows not only to optimize but also to increase efficiency of educational process at all the stages of student’s activity.

We have no experimental data concerning the effectiveness of workbooks in improving of educational process. Though, according to results of the interrogation, the students are convinced that their individual work has become more interesting and practical - oriented.

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