Effectiveness of cognitive digressions in classes of general technical disciplines in institutions of higher education of agro-technical direction

Abstract

The article presents the results of pedagogical research on the impact of the inclusion of cognitive information in educational classes in the study of general technical disciplines on the example of teaching technical mechanics at the College of Agricultural Engineering. The main purpose of the work is to study the impact of involvement in the explanation of cognitive information on the effectiveness of theoretical classes and the quality of knowledge acquisition by students. The study was conducted in the educational process of studying the discipline Technical Mechanics in parallel groups. Before the research in the control and experimental groups, the level of residual knowledge on previous topics of the course and partly on related disciplines was measured. Methodological materials were developed for the experimental group with the inclusion of cognitive information, which to some extent relates to the topics studied. Whereas in the control group teaching took place in strict accordance with traditional teaching materials. As a result of the study it was found that the involvement of cognitive digressions in technical mechanics increased the overall activity of perception and assimilation of educational material, which is expressed in better improvement of both qualitative and quantitative results in the final test in the experimental group compared to control. The results of the study showed that in the groups in which “interesting” explanations were used compared to the initial data of the level of residual knowledge, the efficiency of learning increased by 96.4%, while in the control group this figure was only 25.6%. Thus, the study confirmed the hypothesis that the cognitive presentation of technical sciences may contribute to a more attentive mastery of the subject and, consequently, better learning of the material.