Stimulating the Cognitive Activity of Students while Conducting Experimental Work

Abstract

One of the most effective ways to shape knowledge and skills is conducting experimental work. An experimental test is reproducible under specified conditions any amount of times and always brings identical result. Conducting a laboratory practicum, we can set numerous goals, that would allow to significantly enlarge the boundaries of knowledge, to essentially enrich and diverify the learning process. Good results are obtained by the combination of classical forms of education with modern computer technologies. Creating a virtual educational environment, using multimedia means of teaching, we can achieve significant results, while also solving the tasks of developing the students' intellectual abilities. As a rule, the method of learning to aquire certain information, commonly employed nowadays, is a targeted one, but it is usually limited to taking special courses in logic or psychology, or to taking different kinds of individual psychological training for improving one's memory, thinking, and so on. But taking into account the above mentiond possibilities, we can now distinguish certain stages in stimulating the students' experimental and research activity, and their connection to the levels in the development of cognitive inquisitiveness. Resulting from a research in the cognitive activity of students that was conducted throughout several years, a table has been compiled, linking the stages in the stimulation of the learning to the levels in the development of cogninve interest. Promoting the students through the levels, one can nurture the range of knowledge and skills, required from students in order to successfully conduct scientific research, and therefore to become who they were meant to be, and build a succesful career.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s1p420