Abstract:

The problem of the quality of education remains relevant in the context of the following three-stage model’s implementation in the Russian higher school: bachelor-master-postgraduate studies. The main challenges of this stage of University education development are: content selection, the sequence of the subjects‘ study, learning outcomes’ planning, taking into account the succession of the foregoing stages, combination of traditional and modern educational technologies in the process of educating.

These problems reinforce the importance of research in the area of measuring students’ educational outcomes. This article contains a description and analysis of a long-term research in the field of measuring students’ educational outcomes on the faculty of mathematics and computer science, Kemerovo State University, conducted by the authors with the aim of identifying patterns of these results.

The study has lasted from 2006 to 2016 and covers 1125 students from the first to the fifth year, having been mastering the specialist programs (till 2011) and consequently undergraduate degree programs (2011-2016). During this time educational and professional standards and qualifications have been changing, as well as the approaches and tools for assessment and measurement of educating and learning outcomes. Moreover, the content and approaches in the field of secondary education also changed, that made influence on the quality of students’ training.

In this research special attention was paid to identifying the factors affecting the quality of the students’ training. Comparative analysis of learning outcomes of students in different training areas revealed a number of features of educational process, such as low levels of learning outcomes of the first-year students, the lack of motivation and professional self-identification.

The research was carried out with the use of mathematical statistics methods. Based on the results of the analysis of variance made it possible to conclude that the learning outcomes of school leavers, the profile of their training had little effect on academic achievement of junior students. It is connected primarily with the problems of adaptation of students to the University system of education and low level of their professional identity. The objectivity of these conclusions is proved on the basis of the Wilcoxon test.

In the course of study the mathematical model of the educational process considering identified factors was described. Model adequacy was tested on the coefficient of determination. It was well-proven as a result that the learning outcomes of students on 65 % depend on the chosen factors.

Thus based on the proposed mathematical model it is possible to predict students’ educational results, correct the process of educating due to the aim of improving the quality of university graduates’ training.

The prerequisite for this is a curriculum design for different training areas based on revealed patterns of education, features of adaptation and variants of professional self-identification, including the use of information technologies, individual and differentiated approaches, correcting the process of teaching.

Keywords:

Curriculum design, students’ learning outcomes, educational measuring.