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ORGANISATIONAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF LIFELONG EDUCATION AT DAGESTAN STATE UNIVERSITY
M. Kh. Rabadanov
M. M. Gasanov
With globalisation, Russian higher education has joined universal trends in the development and reform of this sector. The guideline of this reform is reorganisation on the principles of the Bologna Declaration, which is a pan-European project that combines the dynamism of adapting higher education with an adherence to the concept of public benefit and public responsibility. With this reform, the higher educational institutions of Russia combine fidelity to national traditions of education and the integrity of Russian academic schools and methods with the flexibility of new up-and-coming strategies. In this regard, the Concept of the Modernization of the Russian Educational Policy identifies the "provision of modern quality [standards] of education on the basis of the preservation of the appropriate fundamentals with the pressing and up-and-coming needs of the individual, society and state as the primary task”.
Dagestan State University long ago realised the exigency of the qualitative development of the education system in Dagestan, with consideration toward the achievements of Russian education. Recent years saw the emergence of a complex, effectively functioning system of lifelong education, which we regard as the key condition of a successful implementation of the principles of modern general education and vocational training. Current legislation stipulates the implementation of a multi-stage higher education system to be introduced from 2010.
Federal state educational standards of higher vocational training can provide for the preparation of specialists at the level of Bachelors' and Masters' degrees and give students the option of selecting their own training and the continuation of their education at the virtual level, with subsequent tests as a rating system to measure levels of knowledge.
Improving education is one of the most important problems of the modernisation of vocational training in Russia. The new organisation of the educational process is stipulated by the necessity to comply with the recommendations of the Bologna Process on the one hand, and the tasks of improving higher vocational training in Russia on the other. It is no secret that Dagestan State University has generally formed an ambiguous attitude to what we refer to as the Bologna Process, and it is the same story in the whole academic environment of Russia. An attentive study of provisions
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and documents generally referred to as the Bologna Process helps one to understand that the integration of Russia into the "European educational space” is a necessary condition of the development of its national higher education system. The only problem is how to preserve the time-tested traditions of domestic education. It is no longer possible for the Russian system to withdraw into the shell of its domestic higher education, fence itself off from the rest of the world and console itself with the idea that Russian higher education is "the best”.
The Russian system of higher vocational training has started changing; however, it behaves unpredictably, if one can put it that way. Changes in the structure of the sciences, in the ways they are described, have led to large divergences in the classification of fundamental and applied knowledge, and in the description of the humanities and the natural sciences. At the same time, the federal education authorities have launched a purposeful policy of supporting only those higher educational establishments that can "prove” an innovative component to their research and education activities. It is mostly higher educational establishments in the central and industrial donor regions that have received a strong injection of finance, increasing the already widening gap between the centre and higher educational establishments in the regions. What can the regional higher educational establishments do under these conditions? In our opinion, there is only one solution, namely to grope toward our own way of development and our own niche in the training of the highly-qualified and competent specialists that are required by the regional economy of Dagestan and the Southern Federal District. With this outcome in mind, it is necessary to destroy existing stereotypes in the psychologies of teachers and students, combat corruption, and co-operate with the secondary school sector to select and pre-train would-be students capable of studying at higher educational establishments.
As our teachers felt it was difficult to adapt to new realities, Dagestan State University began experimenting with organising the educational process into a system of credits, scores and rating units in 2005, and the accumulated experience of this has led to the introduction of a module-and-rating system in all the University's faculties since 2007. The experiment is ongoing; however, today we can speak about the completion of the first stage, which has explicitly resulted in:
(a) module-based organisation of the educational process;
(b) scores-and-rating system of measurement of the students' knowledge;
(c) new instruments of measurement of the students' knowledge;
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(d) introduction of new computer technologies to organize the educational process (in the Dean's Office, with students, etc.); and,
(e) preparation to experiment with a non-linear organisation of the educational process.
However, we should also remember a no less important a result of the experiment; namely, a change in stereotypical thinking by students and teachers. Here we faced the most serious problems, which required a whole complex of additional actions. Teachers at the University have had to revise their knowledge in compliance with changes in their fields of science, and the needs put forward by society and the student. A lot of teachers chose this difficult path. Some new subjects have appeared, the contents of some subjects and their educational-and-methodological support have been renewed, and the educational technologies have changed. All the above necessitates a creative approach to the educational process and its support by both the teacher and the student. A former passive participant in the educational process, today's student is becoming active, full-fledged and result-oriented. Other teachers have taken the path of actually ignoring the innovations, unable or unwilling to reconstruct themselves to meet the needs of the modern educational system. They share the opinion that all the changes now taking place in the higher school are only an experiment, an "order of the day”, and they should only wait until it is over. Apparently, some teachers have this wait-and-see attitude, believing that the wind of change will blow over without any consequences. Meanwhile, it is obvious even today that those times when the teacher could be sure of his or her professional future have already become a matter of the past. With the introduction of the Federal Educational Standards of the third generation and second-level training of specialists, not only will the student choose an educational program, an individual educational route, and the subject for his or her qualifying papers, but also the graduation chair and the teacher.
The implementation of a multilevel training system will require:
(a) large intellectual investments;
(b) restructuring of faculties and forms of management;
(c) development of a powerful research base for new trends in research;
(d) training of university teachers in new specialisms;
(e) development of a wide range of new educational programs for Bachelors' and Masters' degrees;
(f) the need for regular analysis of the status and the prospects of development of the regional educational market; and,
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(g) development and introduction of new educational and information technologies.
At present, it is the quality of educational programs and educational-and-methodological support that is becoming the primary indicator of the competitiveness of the higher educational establishment and the specialism. Training quality is to a large extent stipulated by teaching quality, which puts the teacher at the centre of the modernisation of higher education and greatly raises the requirements of the level of teaching.
The next experimental stage at Dagestan State University will be aimed at a gradual transition to a non-linear organisation of the educational process on the basis of a credit unit system. The introduction of a credit unit system will contribute to the transition from group training to individual education, which assumes personal participation by each student in the development of educational guidelines, stimulation of regular and productive independent work, and the motivation of the student to master the educational program by a greater differentiation of measurement of the student's academic progress.
Specificity of the present stage of development of higher education is the necessity of system changes on the one hand, and the need to introduce these changes with due account given to the existing traditions of fundamental university education on the other. Dagestan State University has entered the new millennium as a recognised centre of education, science and culture in the region. It is keeping the best domestic traditions -and looking forward with confidence.
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