A Task-Based Approach as a Way to Organize Students' Self-Study

The article is devoted to the organization of journalism students' self-study (SSS). The author proceeds from the idea that modern curricula involve a large volume, up to a third of the total, of hours allotted for SSS. For the efficient organization of SSS, it is necessary to observe a number of principles: independence, individuality, variability, freedom of choice, creativity, and focus on professional development. The task-based approach suits best for organizing practice-oriented training for journalism students, both in major and minor subject areas. The author examines in detail the essential characteristics of the task-based approach. Working with a professional task has a number of stages: developing the task by a professor; giving the task to students and their getting acquainted with it; solving the task individually or in a group; presenting and discussing the result. Any professional task consists of compulsory blocks: introduction, task (there may be several of them), assessment. Among the criteria for assessing professional tasks, the following are distinguished: the ability to navigate in the conditions of the task, the ability to explain the features of the social environment, the ability to classify the problem, the ability to highlight the important and the non-essential, the ability to explain cause and effect, the ability to accept various methods of cognition, the ability to work with text (creative approach). As a result, the features of the task-based approach in training are revealed: (1) the use of professionally oriented tasks contributes to the (self) development of both students and professors in the professional field; (2) professionally oriented tasks are appropriate to be applied in the context of the formation of professional competencies; (3) professionally oriented tasks synthesize theory and practice, which is the most valuable feature in journalistic education; (4) the task-based approach allows one to aim learning at various fields, thus simultaneously solving several pedagogical tasks: increasing the motivation of students, developing problematic thinking, etc.; (5) the task-based approach can be implemented using various additional technologies, for example, the solution of a task can be a portfolio of educational and professional achievements.

Keywords

Authors

References