Abstract:

The main purpose of the article is to reveal the new opportunities opened by programmed learning in studying the humanities in higher school. The implementation of programmed learning raises the efficiency of mastering the studied materials by students and widens the scale of pedagogical tools aimed to promote the students’ learning activities and reinforce their motivation in gaining and sharpening their knowledge.

Programmed learning has become especially relevant since the russian higher education institutions engaged on an active basis to the Bologna process according to the state «Russia’s Innovative Development Strategy to 2020» approved by government directive. The above-described assessment program was first introduced in RUDN (Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia) in learning «Theoretical problems of historical source study» - one of the obligatory to study disciplines in the educational program.

Paying attention to the fact that the higher education institutions in Russia had no previous experience of implementing programmed learning to educate professional historians one can admit that the approach proposed by the authors of the article as well as the real practice of its implementation could be considered as pedagogical innovations. The noted assessment program is integrated in the educational process providing the students with knowledge of results by giving them a tool for self-control of mastering material and for checking their achievements in this discipline in the terms of academic performance scoring system. The assessment program and the scoring results it delivers are also of a big practical value for the professors both to amend the educational practice and the stimulus control and to check final testing of students.

Keywords:

History, programmed learning, assessment, scoring, knowledge of results, higher school, Bologna, Russia.