Peculiarities of using of the Moodle test tools in philosophy teaching

Abstract

The paper considers the role of philosophy and philosophical disciplines as the means of forming general cultural competences, in particular, in the development of critical thinking. The article emphasizes that the process of forming over-subject and soft skills, which, as a rule, include also critical thinking, gets much more complicated under the conditions of the reduction in the volume of philosophical courses. The paper grounds that one of the ways to “return” philosophy to educational programmes can be the implementation of training, using the e-learning environment, especially Moodle. In addition, authors point to the expediency of using this system and, in general, e-learning as an instrument for collaborating students to the world’s educational community and for developing their lifelong learning skills. The article specifies the features of providing electronic support in philosophy teaching, to which the following belongs: the difficulty of parametrizing the learning outcomes; plurality of approaches; communicative philosophy. The paper highlights the types of activities that can be implemented by tools of Moodle. The use of the following Moodle test tasks is considered as an example: test control in the flipped class, control of work with primary sources, control of self-study, test implementation of interim thematic control. The authors conclude that the Moodle system can be used as a tools of online support for the philosophy course, but it is impossible to transfer to the virtual space all the study of this discipline, because it has a significant worldview load. Forms of training, directly related to communication, are integral part of the methodology of teaching philosophy as philosophy itself is discursive, dialogical, communicative and pluralistic. Nevertheless, taking into account features of the discipline, it is possible to provide not only the evaluation function of the test control, but also to realize a number of educational functions: updating the basic knowledge, memorization, activating the cognitive interest, developing the ability to reason and the simpler ones but not less important, – the skill of getting information and familiarization with it.