Guidelines of the preparation for the seminars.

    Quality preparation for the seminar classes and the efficient use of the time are extremely important for the development of trainees' skills in public speaking, logical construction of the materials and conducting discussions in preparation for the tasks and during seminar classes, students will be able:

- to consolidate, deepen and systematize the knowledge acquired during the lectures and self-studies, to expand understanding of the studied subject;

- to check the efficiency of their independent work;

- to develop research skills, synthesis and analysis of educational materials;

- to develop creative thinking skills, to understand ideas;

- to develop skills of logical thinking, e.g. ability to establish causal relationships between different objects, phenomena and other components;

- to develop the skills and rules of public speaking and discussion, the ability to use modern audiovisual equipment.

To prepare for the seminar students should:

- study the content of the task and the plan of the lesson issued by a teacher. Estimated time - 10 min.;

- understand a teacher’s instruction for the seminar and the procedure for its preparation. Estimated time - 10 min.;

- collect and study the content of the recommended literature and other educational materials on the topic of the seminar. Approximate time for the 2 hours seminar is 20 min, 4 hours seminar is 40 min.;

- prepare a detailed plan for presentation on every issue of the tasks. Approximate time for the 2 hours seminar is 15 min., 4 hours seminar is 30 min.

The best preparation with the documentary sources and internet resources. Approximate time for the 2 hours seminar is 40 min., 4 hours seminar is 80 min. During this step, review common questions can arise in an interview.

It is helpful to consider the procedure for the retrieval of necessary educational materials, electronic textbooks and educational literature.

Studying seminar tasks or plan each student should understand: the theme of the seminar, a training goal, training issues, important issues for discussion topics and targeted messages, basic and additional literature, team work and individual counseling, personal training procedure for the seminar (place, date and approximate duration of the training).

A healthy balance of questions pertaining to both course content (topics and subtopics) and instructional process (in-class and out-of-class learning activities) could also be included and clustered together on the evaluation form.

A major advantage of this organizational strategy is that the separate sections or categories can function as signposts or retrieval cues for the designers of the survey, ensuring that the items selected for inclusion in the instrument reflect a well-balanced sample of the major course dimensions that affect the quality of the students' learning experience.

Another advantage of grouping items under section headings is that they can function as cues or signals to students completing the instrument that there are distinct dimensions to the course. This may help them to discriminate among important components of course effectiveness, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will assess them independently.

Recommendation for giving a good presentation:

Providing an outline of the presentation is necessary, as people want to know why they should listen to you. That is why the opening part is very important. It should be cheerful, interesting and catchy. You should know it by heart, so you do not lose track of your thoughts even if you are nervous. A Question & Answer period (Q&A) usually takes place at the end of the presentation, so you have enough time to deliver the main message of your speech without being interrupted by multiple questions. When presenting, you should plan to wow your audience. Use adjectives and descriptive words, as they will help to attract the audience’s attention and make your speech more vivid and memorable. If you need to present numbers or some comparative analysis of algorithms for integration, use some visuals to present it. You can use charts, graphs or diagrams to make your data meaningful and visually attractive. Remember that pie charts are good for representing proportions, line charts to represent trends, column and bar charts for ranking. At the end of the presentation, briefly summarize the main points and ideas. Provide the audience with your opinion and give them a call to action, let them know what you want them to do with the information you have shared. End of the presentation by thanking all the listeners and inviting them to the question and answer.

The discipline is studied for one semester and ends with an exam. The main types of educational classes are lectures, seminars and individual consultations.

During the lecture, the basic concepts should be discussed, associated with theoretical and practical issues, and recommendations should be given for seminar classes and SIW. The seminar classes deepen, develop and reinforce the students' knowledge gained by lectures: skills for conducting public debate, the ability to analyze and diagnose problem situations and distinguish between cause and effect, the ability to evaluate critically arguments and evidence (collect and interpret data and information, generate hypotheses and organize information). In preparation for each seminar students have to learn the recommended literature and prepare answers to the questions of the seminar classes.

 GUIDELINES OF THE ORGANIZATION FOR

STUDENTS' INDEPENDENT WORK

Students' independent work (SIW) includes the study of educational and scientific literature, the study and learning the lecture materials, preparation for practical classes, as well as to the current and final control. Practical classes improve the skills of working with resources and methodology of researching the discipline. Students should study not discussed issues in lectures and seminars during SIW time. Control of students’ independent work on the curriculum is carried out in the seminars orally or in written form. In the course of SIW, each student is required to study the basic and additional literature of the subject. If students are not be able to clarify some issues in the course of SIW, they will make notes and discuss them during the seminar classes or individual consultation with their lecturer.

The methods of didactical literature analysis and data collection employed in the research intended to gain insights into both the methodology that lie behind students’ independent work as well as students perception of the importance of independent work for the development of their skills and competencies. Students should be offered independent practical training work using different objective information resources. Practically such kind of independent work can be identified as problem based learning which takes place through critical and creative thinking.

The students often perceive independent study as developing the skills of applying theoretic knowledge in practice and training how to solve future problems and make decisions. Three forms of the education scientific principle in independent work can be singled out. Firstly, recognizing the sense of student constructed knowledge, the principle of education scientific character in independent work involves the analysis of problematic situations where the teacher acts as a tutor. Secondly, it is impossible to approach the learning without awareness of the students’ psychic processes. The students also acknowledge the importance of entirety for their independent work. If the teachers shifted focus on the learners’ state assumption, they would facilitate the ability of students to adjust to different learning situations. In other words, teachers should try to change how students approach learning rather than changing the instruction to suit each individual. It must be stated that modern didactic principles are closely interrelated as a dynamic system, which is the background for developing students’ skills and competencies. Consequently, not separate didactic principles but the whole system of them should be pursued while implementing the goals, choosing the content, methods, means and resources of independent work as well as creating favorable study environment.

Teachers should be open to collaborating with students who desire a challenge by overseeing SIW and research projects on IR topics or by bringing talented students on board with their own research, for example in the process of data collection.