Problems of managing courses design for technical majors at the university

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of course design management for university students of technical majors. The issue is related to the frequent notion that students do not come to the defense of their course projects on time.

Similarly, to other types of independent student work, working on a course project develops creative thinking, teaches students how to solve professional problems, prepares them to preplan work and be responsible for the quality of its implementation. A violation of the work schedule and/or inability to independently complete a task accordingly is regularly observed in courses for various reasons.

However, this problem indicates the under development of students' skills, such as responsibility, adaptability, independence, the ability to learn new things and find solutions in non-standard circumstances, precisely those skills that employers often find the most important. The article identifies several reasons for the mentioned problem, but the main attention is paid to planning students work, both from the instructor’s and students’ perspectives. In order to plan and control students’ time, it is proposed to apply principles of the critical chain method, which has proven its effectiveness in industry and can be useful in planning the independent work of students. Using the example of a hypothetical course project, the average distribution of curriculum time needed for solving the tasks related to the course project is shown. The time set in the curriculum is determined by the critical chain method as sufficient for working on a project. Careful planning of students' own work can allow them to complete a course project in a much shorter period of time, which eliminates the disruption of project defense deadlines.