Creative Independent Learning for Developing Students’ Professional Competencies

Over the last decade or more, the development of professional competencies has come into sharp focus for higher education. The paper considers the results of studying the organizational and pedagogical conditions for developing the professional competencies of undergraduate students through independent learning. Due to the transition to a two-tier education system, a weighing factor of the independent learning has increased, causing the necessity to reframe a traditional model of organizing the process of teaching. As pointed out by employers, the level of graduate competencies does not always correspond to the operational tasks for bachelors in the field of quality management; the tasks are related to the development, implementation and maintenance of quality management systems and system efficiency analysis. Bachelors should be able to plan activities, set goals, make decisions, but this is impossible without developing the self-organization and independent learning. The necessary pedagogical conditions for developing the professional competencies during the process of independent learning have been identified. The paper provides some examples of organizing the students’ work in making projects, classroom activities, individual home tasks and tests on the Moodle e-learning platform.