1. Understanding of abilities. Qualitative and quantitative indicators of abilities. Types of abilities

traffic lights system is a simple way of identifying the importance of information, highlighting or underlining information in colours:

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  Green: topics to be studied first; important and also simple
  
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  Amber: topics to be studied next; important but time-consuming
  
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  Red: lowest priority; complex and not vital.
  

This reminds students to start with the things which will provide the quickest benefit, while 'red' topics are only dealt with if time allows. The concept is similar to the ABC analysis, commonly used by workers to help prioritize. Also, some websites (such as FlashNotes) can be used for additional study materials and may help improve time management and increase motivation.
In addition to time management, sleep is important; getting adequate rest improves memorisation. Students are generally more productive in the morning than the afternoon.
In addition to time management and sleep, emotional state of mind can matter when a student is studying. If an individual is calm or nervous in class; replicating that emotion can assist in studying. With replicating the emotion, an individual is more likely to recall more information if they are in the same state of mind when in class. This also goes the other direction; if one is upset but normally calm in class it's much better to wait until they are feeling calmer to study. At the time of the test or class they will remember more. While productivity is greater earlier in the day, current research suggests that material studied in the afternoon or evening is better consolidated and retained. This is consistent with current memory consolidation models that student tasks requiring analysis and application are better suited toward the morning and midday while learning new information and memorizing are better suited to evenings. The Pomodoro Method is another effective way of increasing the productivity a set amount of time, by limiting interruptions. Invented in the 1980s, the Pomodoro Technique segments blocks of time into 30-minute sections. Each 30-minute section (called a Pomodoro) is composed of a 25-minute study or work period and a 5-minute rest period. And it is recommended that every 4 Pomodoro's, should be followed with a 15-30-minute break. Though this technique has increased in popularity, it hadn't been empirically studied until more recently. A software engineering corporation found that employees using the Pomodoro Method saw a decrease in their work flow interruptions and an increase in their satisfaction. by being mindful of wasted time during study, students can increase their learning productivity. ournaling can help students increase their academic performance principally through reducing stress and anxiety. Much of students’ difficulty or aversion to analytic subjects such as math or science, is due to a lack of confidence or belief that learning is reasonably within their abilities. Therefore, reducing the stress of learning new and/or complex material is paramount to helping them succeed. Students without access to an outside source of support can use journaling to simulate a similar environment and effect. For example, Frattaroli, et al., studied students that were preparing to take graduate study entrance exams, such as the GRE, LSAT, and MCAT. They found that students’ journal entries recorded immediately before taking these historically stress-inducing tests followed a similar logical flow; where during the beginning of writing, participants would express fear or concern toward the test. However, through the course of writing their experiences down, participants would encourage themselves and ultimately cultivate hope in upcoming exams. As a result of this, those who journaled immediately before these tests reported a lower amount of anxiety, and a better test result. Studying can also be more effective if one changes their environment while studying. For example: the first time studying the material, one can study in a bedroom, the second time one can study outside, and the final time one can study in a coffee shop. The thinking behind this is that as when an individual changes their environment the brain associates different aspects of the learning and gives a stronger hold and additional brain pathways with which to access the information. In this context environment can mean many things; from location, to sounds, to smells, to other stimuli including foods. When discussing environment in regards to its effect on studying and retention Carey says “a simple change in venue improved retrieval strength (memory) by 40 percent. Another change in the environment can be background music; if people study with music playing and they are able to play the same music during test time they will recall more of the information they studied. According to Carey “background music weaves itself subconsciously into the fabric of stored memory.” This “distraction” in the background helps to create more vivid memories with the studied material. Analogies can be a highly effective way to increase the efficiency of coding and long-term memory. Popular uses of analogies are often forming visual images that represent subject matter, linking words or information to one's self, and either imagining or creating diagrams that display the relationship between elements of complex concepts. A 1970 study done by Bower and Winzez found that as participants created analogies that had sentimentality or relevance to themselves as a unique individual, they were better able to store information as well as recall what had been studied. This is referred to as the Self-reference Effect. Adding to this phenomenon, examples that are more familiar an individual or that are more vivid or detailed are even more easily remembered. However, analogies that are logically flawed and/or are not clearly described can create misleading or superficial models in learners. A mnemonic is a method of organizing and memorizing information. There are four main types of mnemonic: (1) Narrative (relying on a story of some kind, or a sequence of real or imagined events); (2) Sonic/Textual (using rhythm or repeated sound, such as rhyme, or memorable textual patterns such as acronyms); (3) Visual (diagrams, mind maps, graphs, images, etc.); (4) 'Topical' (meaning ‘place-dependent’, for instance, using features of a familiar room, building or set of landmarks as a way of coding and recalling sequenced facts). Some mnemonics use a simple phrase or fact as a trigger for a longer list of information. For example, the cardinal points of the compass can be recalled in the correct order with the phrase "Never Eat Shredded Wheat". Starting with North, the first letter of each word relates to a compass point in clockwise order round a compass. Flashcards are visual cues on cards. These have numerous uses in teaching and learning but can be used for revision. Students often make their own flashcards, or more detailed index cards – cards designed for filing, often A5 size, on which short summaries are written. Being discrete and separate, they have the advantage of allowing students to re-order them, pick a selection to read over, or choose randomly for self-testing. Software equivalents can be used. Study skills are generally critical to success in school, considered essential for acquiring good grades, and useful for learning throughout one's life. While often left up to the student and their support network, study skills are increasingly taught at the high school and university level. The term study skills is used for general approaches to learning, skills for specific courses of study. There are many theoretical works on the subject, including a vast number of popular books and websites. Manuals for students have been published since the 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s, college instructors in the fields of psychology and the study of education used to research, theory, and experience with their own students in writing manuals. Marvin Cohn based the advice for parents in his 1978 book Helping Your Teen-Age Student on his experience as a researcher and head of a university reading clinic that tutored teenagers and young adults. In 1986, when Dr. Gary Gruber’s Essential Guide to Test Taking for Kids was first published, the author had written 22 books on taking standardized tests. A work in two volumes, one for upper elementary grades and the other for middle school, the Guide has methods for taking tests and completing schoolwork. Memorization is the process of committing something to memory, often by rote. The act of memorization is often a deliberate mental process undertaken in order to store information in one's memory for later recall. This information can be experiences, names, appointments, addresses, telephone numbers, lists, stories, poems, pictures, maps, diagrams, facts, music or other visual, auditory, or tactical information. Memorization may also refer to the process of storing particular data into the memory of a device. One of the most basic approaches to learning any information is simply to repeat it by rote. Typically this will include reading over notes or a textbook and re-writing notes.
The weakness of rote learning is that it implies a passive reading and listening style. Educators such as John Dewey have argued that students need to learn critical thinking – questioning and weighing up evidence as they learn. This can be done during lectures or when reading books. A method that is useful during the first interaction with the subject of study is REAP method. This method helps students to improve their understanding of the text and bridge the idea with that of the author's. REAP is an acronym for Read, Encode, Annotate and Ponder. Annotating and Encoding helps reprocess content into concise and coherent knowledge which adds to a meaningful symbolic fund of knowledge. Precise annotation, Organizing question annotation, Intentional annotation, and Probe annotation are some of the annotation methods used.

A student using the PQRST method.A method used to focus on key information when studying from books uncritically is the PQRST method. This method prioritizes the information in a way that relates directly to how they will be asked to use that information in an exam. PQRST is an acronym for Preview, Question, Read, Summary, Test. There are a variety of studies from different colleges nationwide that show peer-communication can help increase better study habits tremendously. One study shows that an average of 73% score increase was recorded by those who were enrolled in the classes surveyed. In order to make reading or reviewing material more engaging and active, learners can create cues that will stimulate recall later on. A cue can be a word, short phrase, or song that helps the learner access a memory that was encoded intentionally with this prompt in mind. The use of cues to aid memory has been popular for many years, however, research suggests that adopting cues made by others is not as effective as cues that learners create themselves. Self-testing is another effective practice, when preparing for exams or other standardized memory recall situations. Many students prepare for exams by simply rereading textbook passages or materials. However, it's likely that this can create a false sense of understanding because of the increased familiarity that students have with passages that they have reviewed recently or frequently. Instead, in 2006, Roediger and Karpicke studied eighth-grade students’ performance on history exams. Their results showed that students who tested themselves on material they had learned, rather than simply reviewing or rereading subjects had both better and longer lasting retention. The term Testing Effect is used to describe this increase in memory performance. Taking notes by using a computer can also deter impactful learning, even when students are using computers solely for the purpose note-taking and are not attempting to multitask, during lectures or study sessions. This is likely due to shallower processing from students using computers to take notes. Taking notes on a computer often ushers a tendency for students to record lectures verbatim, instead of writing the points of a lecture in their own words.


From my own teaching experience and anecdotal evidence of colleagues, Wikipedia is much used by students as a source of information in researching for their essays— often to the dismay of teachers who are sceptical about the validity of the information found on Wikipedia. Indeed, Michael Gorman, who was once in charge of libraries at several US universities and is former head of the Office of Bibliographic Standards in the British Library, criticised Wikipedia (and Google) for helping to create a generation of ―intellectual sluggards‖.2 Yet, Wikipedia (as a fully editable site) has also been hailed as an effective learning tool for encouraging students to develop critical thinking and research and writing skills, as well as enabling collaboration. 3 In addition, Wikipedia guidelines encourage good scholarship. All information should be balanced, or conform to what Wikipedia calls ‗Neutral Point of View‘ or NPOV. Information should also be referenced to credible sources in order to avoid factually incorrect statements or accusations of plagiarism. As a fully-editable site, all articles are subject to peer review. Anything can be disputed or amended by other Wikipedians. This means that contributions should be rigourous and balanced in order to avoid being deleted, challenged or changed by other Wikipedians. It also means that Wikipedia represents a live experience of the process of knowledge production as an arena of contestation. The contested nature of knowledge is an essential belief within academia and largely defines how we research and teach. Yet, students are often hesitant or unclear as to what their role is in this process. Therefore, I anticipated that assessment of students‘ contributions to Wikipedia would enable students to directly experience the contested nature of knowledge production. This project was a pilot that sought to develop the use of Wikipedia as a method of student learning and assessment1 in postgraduate teaching—specifically, in my taught MA unit, ‗Issues in the Contemporary Politics of the Middle East‘. Towards this end, students were required to edit existing articles and produce a new article for the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. In this respect, the project aimed at enhancing the student experience of research-led teaching and learning at postgraduate level through innovation in learning and teaching methods. Through engagement with Wikipedia, I anticipated that students would develop a number of relevant skills that enhance the quality of their learning experience. These included increasing the subject-specific knowledge of Middle East politics as well as improving independent research and writing skills and the ability to critically evaluate sources. From my point of view, the Wikipedia project enabled the students to meet the learning outcomes of the unit, with regards to gaining sufficient knowledge of particular issues in Middle East politics in order to critically engage with the relevant literature. Writing for a public audience, rather than for the teacher alone, was clearly motivating for the students and they were far more enthusiastic about the subject in comparison to previous year groups, where students had been assessed on essays. In addition, the weekly editing task contributed to well-informed seminar discussions. Almost all of the students dramatically improved their performance over time. Since only 3 out of 8 edited articles counted towards their final unit mark, this meant that they were not penalised by the innovativeness of the assessment method. However, this also meant that it was a heavy workload for all concerned. In addition, three students did not improve their performance over time and at least two of these students would have felt more comfortable with writing essays. However, the fact that none of the students found this an easy task demonstrates that it is both intellectually challenging and contributes to developing skills not already developed in other units. The most challenging aspect of writing for Wikipedia was the concept of ‗Neutral Point of View‘ (NPOV). On the one hand, from a post-positivist point of view, the term ‗neutral‘ with regards to scholarship is highly problematic. There is no single truth. However, ironically, a NPOV approach fully supports the exploration of ‗alternative truths‘. Many students initially believed that as long as they were quoting from an existing work, this represented a valid contribution to Wikipedia. Some of them failed to see that this single reference represented only one point of view and, in order to contribute to the balance of the article, they also had to represent other points of view. In several cases, student edits were deleted by other Wikipedians because they were not considered to be NPOV. The Wikipedia commitment to NPOV provided an unexpected opportunity to discuss issues concerning epistemology (although, the discussion was not framed in that way) In order to bring the workload in line with other units, I will reduce the number of edited articles that each student submits. However, in order that students have an opportunity to practise editing articles, I will organize a longer computer lab session in week 1, where I can provide more immediate guidance on using the Wiki technology, including a live demonstration of article editing. In week 2 of the unit, I need to discuss with students the meaning of NPOV as necessary preparation for writing for Wikipedia. This will necessarily involve providing extra classroom time in the first two weeks, in order that students do not feel that learning about Wikipedia is taking time away from learning about Middle East politics. In addition to the assessment tasks designed for this pilot, Wikipedia possesses other features that could enable the creation of other assessments. First, Wikipedia (like Wiki technology in general) lends itself to collaborative work and, therefore, could be used in assessing group work. Second, all Wikipedia articles have a discussion page, where Wikipedians debate the content of particular articles. Most of the articles on Middle East politics possess very lively talk pages that demonstrate the high degree of contention in the field. Students could be assessed on their contributions to the talk page. In terms of rolling this out to undergraduate students, there is little doubt that this would be an interesting and useful type of assessment for them and it should be feasible at any level or for any subject. Through dissemination to colleagues, I expect that this will be rolled out to UGs in other schools and even other universities.
Extensive research, development, and testing led to the creation of the LASSI, which is designed to measure learning and study strategies related to skill, will and self-regulation components of strategic learning. The focus is on both covert and overt thoughts, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that relate to successful learning and that can be altered through educational interventions. The LASSI identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the learner, and provides feedback about areas that may prove to be more challenging, such as study skills, organization, or time management. The results of this assessment will be provided to both the learner and the coach, who will work together to create a personalized learning plan and connect the learner with resources and strategies to improve performance and overall experience of being a distance learner. The LASSI is a 10-scale, 60-item assessment that was developed at the University of Texas at Austin by Claire Ellen Weinstein, Ph.D., Ann C. Schulte, Ph.D., and David R. Palmer, Ph.D. For example, Albert Einstein was considered an underachiever in high school, and there were no signs of his future genius.
The ability does not appear in the knowledge and skills themselves, but is manifested in the system of their acquisition, that is, in other words, how quickly, deeply, easily in various conditions in the process of acquiring knowledge and skills important for this activity and is manifested in its solid implementation.
As abilities are individual psychological characteristics, intellectual qualities cannot be contrasted with memory characteristics, emotional characteristics, and so on, and abilities cannot be equated with these characteristics of a person. If any of these qualities or a combination of them meets the requirements of the activity or is formed under the influence of these requirements, this is the basis for considering these individual characteristics of a person as abilities.
Ability is a characteristic of a person's psychological and physiological structure. Competence is a prerequisite for learning, and therefore, to some extent, it is also a product of learning. In the process of mastering general and special knowledge, as well as acquiring professional skills, the ability is perfected and developed. Closer concepts to ability are skills and competencies. They form the mechanism of action. And they ensure the achievement of skills together with ability, as a result of which great achievements in work are achieved. A capable but incompetent person cannot achieve much. Ability manifests itself in skill.
In fact, the skills and abilities of a gifted person are versatile and perfected. At the same time, skills and abilities that are lacking can be filled to some extent or the deficiency in it can be completed. The summation of skills is called mastery. Skill is also a derivative of ability.
Any skill is complex and makes different demands on a person. If the system of personal characteristics can meet this requirement, a person can demonstrate his ability to perform the activity successfully, if any of the characteristics is not developed, the person is considered capable of a certain type of work. Each ability has its own structure. It is necessary to distinguish between basic and leading characteristics, certain basic or auxiliary characteristics in the structure of ability.
The main basis for all abilities is the ability to observe, to know. It means being able to see the original side of the individual, the starting material for creative activity. The leading feature of the ability is creative imagination.
The following can be considered auxiliary characteristics: memory (it has a specific structure in accordance with the requirements of activity), emotionality, that is, sensitivity to feelings (this characteristic increases the activity of a person) and the like. In some forms of practical activity, the individual's will comes to the fore. The content of different features in the structure of ability may be different in different periods of activity or stages of creativity. Hence, structure is both stable and variable.
In the work of the Russian psychologist BMTeplov and his students, they tried to determine whether some qualitative features appear in the structure of the individual's abilities due to the influence of the characteristics of higher types of nervous activity. In particular, the special sensitivity of the nervous system can appear as a target of a certain ability.
Abilities, according to BM Teplov, are present in the process of regular development. Also, it should be noted that the performance of each activity is not the same, but depends on the combination of different abilities. The lack of targets necessary for the development of some abilities, their deficiency can be compensated by the high development of other abilities.
There are two directions in the study of the problem of abilities in Russian psychology.