Open AccessIn designing the undergraduate programmes, a development of objectified procedures to assess students and graduates’ level of skills and learning outcomes aimed at achieving the ultimate goals of training is an important task for Higher Education Institutions (HEI).
The purpose of this work is to develop a description of the physics course objectives differentiated according to levels of learning achievements for engineering HEI, as well as the assessment procedures and diagnostic means associated with this description to specify and define the degree of their achievement.
The taxonomy of levels to master learning content is proposed and tested. Its aim is to assess rapidly a degree of achieved objectives i.e. meeting requirements for student and graduate’s competences in physics. Classification is given according to which the reproductive activity is a manifestation of the levels of recognition, reproduction and reproductive use of knowledge while the productive activity is an ability to use previously learned information, methods of action for the new scenarios, situations, conditions. The paper presents content of the main features of learning the study materials in physics at each taxonomic level. It offers a developed package of assessment materials based on traditional (tests, training tasks) and competence-oriented control methods (professionally oriented and case studies, integrative assignments). The paper proves that when designing the diagnostic means it is expedient to take into consideration the analysis results of the expert assessments that the physics course curricular elements are of significance for fundamental and ideological studies and successful learning of the module of professional disciplines. It also shows that there is a need to use the content of typical tasks in disciplines of professional cycle of the undergraduate programme.
The proposed approaches and results can serve as a basis for teaching improvement in physics at engineering HEI when developing the content, disciplinary learning objectives, and methods to assess a degree of their achievement.