An advertising campaign is a set of interrelated, coordinated actions designed to achieve strategic goals and solve problems of an enterprise, and which are the result of a common advertising plan for various, but related advertising messages posted in various media over a certain period of time.
From the definition, we can highlight the fundamental points for any advertising campaign:
- - an advertising campaign is a process that includes several successive stages, starting with setting goals and ending with an analysis of effectiveness;
- - advertising campaign involves the complex use of advertising media.
Lack of budget and lack of time are two of the most frequently cited reasons for not analyzing the effectiveness of PR campaigns. However, there are other factors that influence the implementation of performance appraisal.
At the core of the PR industry's approach to research and evaluation is the history and nature of PR practice. The 4 PR models by James Grünig (see appendix #1) provide insight into the evolution of PR and suggest why research and analysis of campaign effectiveness has not been used as much as it should be.
The concept of "public relations" was born in press agencies, which concentrated almost exclusively on advertising in the glorious era that gave rise to the phrase "any advertising is good advertising." This was followed by the evolution of the public awareness model, which became dominant after the 1950s. This model went beyond publicity, events and other communication activities, but still focused on the dissemination of information. This information could be tracked and measured by counting the number of articles, the number of lines in the advertising column, the number of publications in general, and so on, as they say, the information was "weighted in kilograms."
The dissemination of information, what the Public Awareness model focused on, is a one-way flow of information, focused on releasing a product (in this case, information) rather than achieving a result. According to this approach, responsibility for the disseminated information - which is read, understood, remembered, believed - is not considered the prerogative of a PR specialist. Therefore, there is no need for evaluation studies.
However, as shown in Grünig's 4 PR Models, the most effective model will be one that evolves from bilateral asymmetry to bilateral symmetry in dealing with the target audience. In the two-way model, the focus shifts from simply disseminating information to persuading and building rapport, which includes changing attitudes and behaviors. Although such changes are possible, achieving these goals and providing specific numbers for these changes requires in-depth research.
Today, private and public sector clients expect and demand persuasion, not just information - whether it's buying a product, service, donating money to charity, and so on. The dominant paradigm of practice today is to find a balance between PR and persuasion.
If you follow the theory of the psychology of communication, you can distinguish 6 stages of persuasion:
- 1) Submission
- 2) Attention
- 3) Understanding
- 4) Acceptance
- 5) Memorization
- 6) Action
Public awareness concentrates only on the first point - performance. To achieve the persuasion effect, PR and communication must create a situation of using points 2-6 with the target audience. In most cases, the attention, understanding, acceptance, remembering and action of target groups can only be tracked through research.
However, in a large number of cases, PR and communication remain one-way dissemination of information, focused on the "release" of information, which is a barrier to the development of PR as a strategic management function.
New interactive communication technologies such as websites, chats, and online forums are potential venues for two-way communication. However, if there is an opinion that new technologies will help facilitate and establish a dialogue with stakeholders, there is another thing - these technologies are just a new channel for disseminating information.
PR professionals need to learn how to apply new strategic approaches to communication, and find a way to create a two-way interaction process aimed at getting results. It will also make research more meaningful: both formative research to determine the opinions and needs of the audience, and evaluative research to measure the level of change.
Another important factor affecting the evaluation of the effectiveness of PR is the lack of properly set goals, that is, goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
Most PR programs have goals that are too broad, vague, and imprecise to be impossible even with a good budget. In projects, goals are often formulated as follows:
increase awareness of the program;
successfully launch a product or service;
improve the image of a company or organization.
Such goals are formulated too generally, so it is not clear by what criteria to evaluate the result. What is the current level of awareness? Which target group requires more awareness? What is the current image of this company, and what is the desired image?
Many leading PR professionals note that the lack of setting clear goals hinders the development of PR and communication processes. James Grünig, for example, speaks of "the typical setting of ill-defined, unintelligent, and unmeasurable communication effects, which PR people refer to as goal setting."
According to Dennis Wilcox, before any PR program is evaluated, it is necessary to clearly formulate measurable goals.
Validity is also an important factor for correct setting goals. Many companies and organizations have already established corporate and marketing goals, and PR can inherit them. PR campaign goals and corporate information goals should complement and interact with the overall corporate goals, they should be reasonable and clear, only under this condition it will be possible to track the results. If PR communication in a company has common goals of advertising and direct marketing, then it will be quite difficult to determine the effectiveness.
The principle of micro- and macro-measurements is one of the most effective approaches in goal setting. Macro measurement refers to establishing an overall outcome for a company or organization. Micro-measurements are necessary to determine the effectiveness of individual events: product release, publicity, briefings. Macro measurements are important in order to know the result as a whole, in the end; micro-measurements are needed in order to:
- 1) determine success and find out whether it is worth continuing this or that event;
- 2) identify the cumulative effect in relation to overall result in the long run.
Using the aforementioned measurements, and given that numbers and percentages should appear in the measurement of the results of the set goals, approximate PR communication goals can be as follows:
- - increase in profits by at least 10% compared to the previous year;
- - improving the image of the organization in the eyes of leading journalists;
- - attracting at least 40,000 visitors per month to the company's website;
- - increase in attendance at special events by 20%;
- - Decrease in the number of customer complaints by 25%.
These goals (which can also be called key performance indicators) provide a framework for measuring results and can be used in PR communications.
Another important detail in setting goals is to coordinate them with management. It is necessary to convince managers that the achievement of a particular goal will be beneficial for both company-wide goals and marketing strategies. Very often, PR specialists develop a whole set of goals that management does not like and lead to inevitable disappointment on both sides.
To ensure the effectiveness of the results of the goals set, PR specialists must have at least a basic understanding of communication theory. Misconceptions about what can be achieved with communication methods lead to incorrect and often overly optimistic assertions, which in turn make evaluation problematic.
The third factor influencing research in the field of public relations and corporate communication is the predominantly liberal education of most PR specialists and the lack of experience in conducting research.
Until relatively recently, research was not included in the study of PR and communication, which led to the fact that people who came to the field of PR did not have the necessary knowledge of how to plan and conduct research, they did not have knowledge of statistics, psychology , sociology.
The paradigm of Edward Bernays, on which until recently the idea of modern PR was based, needs to be supplemented and new approaches such as, for example, the Bilateral symmetric Grünig PR model.
Grünig's paradigm defines public relations as a form of communicative persuasion that inclines public opinion towards systematization. "Co-orientation theory" uses two-way approaches to communication, in which the sectors of the audience and the organization meet in the middle, or at least somewhere between the poles of their views.
Many PR professionals have only a vague idea of Otto Lerbinger's four main types of PR research: Evaluation environment, expertise public opinion, expertise of communication channels, social expertise. Many use these terms interchangeably, which is wrong, many do not have an idea about the principles of compiling public opinion polls, compiling questionnaires and, thus, experience some difficulties in conducting and planning research.
Another barrier to research is the "multimedia" nature of PR. This concept does not apply to multimedia technologies, but to the many disciplines that make up PR and to the channels used by PR.
PR includes such areas as relations with the press, employees, the public, the government, shareholders, and so on. In all these areas of relations, specialists use a wide range of communication tools to interact with the target audience: publicity, publications, video and multimedia programs, events, websites, sponsorship.
Some studies evaluate public relations as a general rating system using the same methods for all areas. However, many experts claim that different areas of PR use different techniques to suit their goals and audiences. There is no single study or method that can be applied with equal effectiveness to all PR disciplines.
PR specialists and communication specialists must recognize the existence of separate methods that are characteristic of a particular area. There is also a wide range of tools that are also used in narrow areas - publicity, publications, events. No one technique can be applied in all areas of PR.
The fifth important factor in evaluation and measurement is the traditional strong notion that evaluation is done after work has been completed. Management theory throughout the 20th century defended the PIE Model - planning, implementation, evaluation.
However, the PRO model is ineffective in research and evaluation. For starters, there is no need for formative research here before work on the project has begun. In addition, evaluation at the final stage of the project faces three main problems that make it ineffective:
- 1. In practice, in most cases, PR specialists do not have enough time and money to conduct research by the end of the project.
- 2. Management usually does not wait until the end of the program to see evidence of effectiveness.
- 3. More importantly, it is too late to evaluate the results after the completion of the project, because this does not represent a great strategic benefit. Why do you need to find out after the letter was published, no one read it? Or, why find out that employees want access to the Intranet after budget money has been spent on an expensive multimedia presentation.
Evaluation at the end of the program does not provide much benefit and carries a certain risk that the results will be unpleasant. And ultimately leads to the emergence of "fear of evaluation studies."
Revealing all these weaknesses in the traditional form of "evaluate the effectiveness of the project at its completion" has led to the creation of new evaluation approaches that debunk the old concept. The modern approach is that research, surveys should be conducted before the start of the project. Marston introduced the new RACE formula, where R is research (research), A is Action (action), C is Communication (communication) and E is Evaluation (evaluation).
Based on system theory, Richard Carter coined the term "behavioral molecule" for a model that describes actions that occur according to the principle chain reaction. In the context of this formula, Grünig identifies the following elements of PR: discover, create, determine, select, confirm, develop, discover.
Craig Aronov and Otis Baskin further develop this idea: “evaluation is not the last stage of the PR process. In practice, evaluation is the beginning of efforts. The research function is important in planning as well as in action and evaluation. These are interconnected processes that, set in motion, have neither beginning nor end.”
This approach gets rid of the “fear of assessment”, which was a major obstacle to the wider application of the assessment procedure. That is, the re-positioning of the assessment is required directly in the field of PR: from the assessment of work already performed to the process of constant systematic accumulation of information, in order to more effectively plan future actions.
Costs, both monetary and time, can be a barrier to conducting research.
If the PR professional does not recognize the importance of two-way communication and focuses only on achieving results such as changing attitudes, behaviors, and building relationships, the assessment will be irrelevant and he will remain a "technical communication worker."
Without clearly defined goals, activity costs can exceed budget.
If evaluation is nevertheless scheduled for the final stage of the project, it may not be completed due to lack of time, money, or both. And if it is done, it will be too late to use the results in strategic planning.
The history of KPI for PR professionals is like a Cinderella story: all PR people know how much they clean up behind the rest of the departments in terms of sales, reputation, marketing, corporate communications and corporate culture, but go and prove that this or that success is in number and your hands. What are the most popular KPIs for PR specialists on the Russian financial market today?
The most popular KPIs must first be divided into quantitative and qualitative ones. Quantitative ones form an array of data, and qualitative ones, respectively, help to evaluate it in terms of the result obtained. We have selected the 10 most popular performance indicators that management most often uses to evaluate the effectiveness of PR departments. For convenience, we have indicated the methods of its calculation and the complexity of the assessment (1 - very easy, 5 - extremely difficult).
1. Press rating
The most "ancient" but still popular primary quantitative indicator. There was a time when some executives judged the effectiveness of PR work by the thickness of a stack of weekly press clips. Nowadays, no one slides down to such a mockery of common sense, but the figure with the number of publications still acts on most leaders in some magical way. Today, several better and more objective tools have appeared based on the analysis of the general array of publications, but the press rating, as the simplest and most understandable criterion, is still the leader in popularity.
Counting method: Digital Libraries Mass media/Independently through Yandex.News/Google.News
Complexity: 1
2. Citation Index (CI)
This KPI is derived from the press rating and belongs to the quality category. However, under this term indicators may be completely different in format and design. For example, in the Medialogy system, the "Citation Index" in relation to the media is an indicator of the number of references to a publication in other publications, which also takes into account their influence.
Yandex has a thematic citation index (TIC) - a Yandex technology used to determine the authority of sites by the number of links to them from other sites.
But back to the PR industry. Several financial companies that I have consulted today use what is called a news or event citation index, which shows the average number of reprints of a company's official messages (news/press releases) over a certain period. Using this indicator, you can record the interest of the media in certain company news, as well as the effectiveness of the company's news dissemination by the press service.
Counting method: Qn/Qr, where Qn is the total number of official messages of the company, and Qr is the total number of reprints of these messages. The final view of the indicator is 1:5 or 1 to 5. Collection and primary sorting of information using the search by events of the EB "Medialogia"
Complexity : 4
3. MediaIndex
Today, this is probably the only integral indicator generally accepted and generally recognized by the PR community that evaluates the overall effectiveness of a company's ('object') PR activity in the media space.
The calculation of the media index is based on taking into account three main factors: the citation of the object and its speakers, the visibility of the object, the tonality of messages in relation to the object. In PR practice, this is so far the only generalizing indicator that shows the overall effectiveness of PR with sufficient accuracy. Among its shortcomings, one can point out, firstly, the incompleteness of the Medialogy base, secondly, the lack of comparison with companies that are not objects in the system, and thirdly, the confidentiality of the MediaIndex calculation formula, which the company protects from prying eyes as its intellectual property.
Counting method: not disclosed by creators
Difficulty: 1
4. Site traffic
With the growing importance of the Internet in Everyday life consumers, the importance of the Internet representation of companies has critically increased. This area is especially important for the FMCG sector and, in general, for those companies that can sell goods and services via the Internet as part of their business model. Since in most cases PR specialists are responsible for filling the content of Internet representations, the site traffic becomes a KPI, including that of the PR department. In this case, there is a merging of advertising and PR in the organizational structure of the company. Whether this is good or bad is a secondary question, but it is a fact, and all the leading headhunters have been talking about this for quite a long time.
Counting method: attendance counters Liveinternet, Mail.ru, Rambler, GoogleAnalytics, company's own IT platform
Difficulty: 1
5.PR Value (AVE)
At the dawn of the first KPIs in the PR industry, PR Value was a very fashionable and progressive indicator, the use of which was a sign of elitism. However, over time, attitudes towards him changed. Initially, PRV showed, roughly speaking, how much direct advertising would cost where PR material is posted (we are not talking about “jeans”). "Tsimes" was that if advertising would be cheaper in terms of costs than financing PR efforts, then the economic efficiency of the PR specialist was called into question.
But it was the end of the 90s - the beginning of the 2000s, and then people's trust in advertising had not yet been completely undermined, and the "jeans" in editorial texts did not hit the reputation of the media much. Today, when people are tired of intrusive advertising, when business publications in every possible way distance themselves (at least publicly) from advertisers and carefully clean out any hints of bias, the value of PR material published on editorial space has seriously increased. At the latest PR Russia Trends Summit, an IPRA representative stated that the advertising equivalent can no longer show the value of PR, since even the economic effect of a single mention of a company in an article can be higher than the advertising layout for the entire page.
Counting method: Calculation of the advertising cost of mentions in specific publications based on the analysis of these media price lists, taking into account data on the company's role in the message, the visibility and size of the publication. An important element of the calculation is the data on the average discount for advertising from the official price list.
Complexity: 5
6. Cost per contact (CPC/CPT)
Another measure of cost-effectiveness for many companies is the cost per contact. It came to PR directly from advertising, where it is used to evaluate the effectiveness of various promotion channels. The use of CPC to evaluate the effectiveness of PR is inextricably linked with such an indicator as Media Outreach (potential audience of messages). Its use in isolation from the statistics of the company itself or statistics on the market is extremely difficult, since the calculation of Media Outreach is highly dependent on the calculation tools, in particular, the calculation of the attendance of electronic resources. Most major publications hide their statistics, and in open sources The numbers may differ by orders of magnitude.
Counting method: The calculation of CPC is quite simple and is the ratio of the total amount of PR costs (including payroll, excluding monitoring and audit) to the total potential audience of all initiated messages about the company. The dimension of this indicator is expressed in $/ch.c., where c.c. - human contact.
Complexity:1
7. Media Outreach
One of the oldest quantitative measures of PR effectiveness also came from the advertising market. With the development of the Internet, its calculation has ceased to be a complex procedure accessible only to analytical and statistical agencies.
Now, when approximately 85%-90% of the entire media space is made up of electronic resources, the MOr calculation has become available to everyone. Among recent changes on the market, it can be noted that it was automatically introduced by the Medialogia system, though so far only when using object search and in a generalized form. The system does not yet show the potential audience of a particular message.
Counting method: Based on statistics from monitoring agencies.
Complexity: 1
8. The share of direct speech (DPR / Citation)
This indicator in its various variations has been used in the industry relatively recently. In most cases, it is necessary for companies whose business model involves the active use of personal brands of employees and / or owners and where the value of the team is high. We are talking about the sale of services, status and other intangible assets, the value of which in the eyes of the consumer is strongly associated with the personality of a particular person.
In the asset management market, the reputation and fame of the investment portfolio manager, lead analyst and CEO together make up 90% of the company's business reputation, and in the field of wealth management, the owner's reputation = 100% of the company's reputation.
In this sense, the share of direct speech of speakers from the total array of publications is an indicator of how much the person of the company A) noticeable in the media field and b) actively convey their position and opinion, and not only “catch” assessments and negative from the outside. In this sense, financial analysts of investment companies, in fact, have long been on a par with PR specialists in terms of the similarity of their KPIs, because some of them already generate such a volume of text that it is impossible to produce not only without being distracted from data processing, but simply alone.
Counting method: The ratio of messages with direct speech of speakers to the total array of publications about the company in%.
Complexity: 3
9. Project indicators (leads, event participants, calls, reviews, etc.)
For most companies working in the mass market, the issues of the number of publications or citations of the management play such an insignificant role that often PR as a separate direction is not there, but merges into a single functionality of a marketer / advertiser.
However, where PR still remains a more or less isolated area, more stringent economic indicators are used to evaluate the effectiveness of PR. In particular, one of the main activities of a PR specialist in such companies is event-management, within which the company has direct contact with customers, therefore the KPI of a PR specialist is the number of event participants, the number of applications for a product / service, the number of reviews about the event, attendance event pages, etc. Where PR is a function of marketing, everything is aimed at extracting specific material benefits “here and now”, therefore, PR technologies in the company are also sharpened to stimulate direct interaction with the end consumer, i.e. for sale.
Counting method: call center, website, counters, registration forms at events,
Complexity: 1 to 4
10. Subjective assessment of management
Yes, yes, and it is also actively used even in very modern and technologically advanced companies. Therefore, some of the PR people will be more lucky, and one interview in Kommersant will close the KPI plan for the whole month, while someone will be less lucky and the leadership in industry ratings of media activity will not be noticed, in contrast to a disliked photo of a loved one in a corporate newspaper. It is also important to remember that even in those companies where a PR specialist is evaluated by most of all the above indicators, subjective assessment in one form or another is still present, because we work for specific people, and there are no ideal people.
Anton Zapolsky,
PR-director of JSC NPF “Solntse. Life. Pension”, Executive Director of the Financial PR Club
The question of evaluating the effectiveness arises if the funds invested in PR seem disproportionately high compared to the results of the PR events carried out. Evaluation of effectiveness is also necessary to confirm the choice of certain tools for the implementation of one's own communication program.
Formulation of the problem
Often the evaluation of the effectiveness of PR activities becomes a stumbling block in the client work of a public relations manager, when PR activities are compared with advertising, the result of which can be measured, for example, through financial performance indicators, as well as special statistical procedures.
Regardless of the specific practical context, the topic of the effectiveness of PR events naturally raises the question of the criteria for its measurement.
Key principles
Before proceeding to the description of the assessment tools used in practice, I would like to outline the basic principles, deviation from which, as the experience of implementing a number of projects has shown, can significantly complicate the process of assessing effectiveness:
- The goals of PR activity should be consistent with the business goals of the company. The goals of any PR event should at least not contradict common goals organizations at this stage of development. In general, it is necessary that PR-activity correspond to the strategic priorities of the company in the field of relations with target groups and the public in the broadest sense.
- PR activity should be evaluated in PR terms. Quite often, representatives of the business community try to present business criteria to public relations and evaluate the results of PR activities as a percentage of turnover, profit, or growth in the number of customer requests. Unfortunately, real processes do not allow a pure experiment: it is hardly possible to separate the results of using PR from the factors of changing external conditions, for example, legislation, or internal ones - an incorrectly chosen business strategy of the company.
- Methods for evaluating effectiveness are varied. There is no one reliable and unambiguously correct tool for evaluating the effectiveness of an organization's PR activities. The assessment tools are directly related to the criteria that we consider as a priority for this project. There are quite a few tools for evaluating the effectiveness of PR activities, both qualitative (content analysis, expert surveys, focus groups, etc.) and quantitative (telephone/on-line surveys, mass population surveys, etc.).
- Planning a PR event makes it possible to evaluate the effectiveness. Performance evaluation is always a comparison of the achieved results with the planned ones, therefore, first of all, it is necessary to determine the strategic goal and tactical objectives of the ongoing PR activities. At the same time, it is desirable to define the goal in terms and concepts that can be further used as criteria for evaluating effectiveness.
For example, you can set a goal to include bank experts among the most relevant commentators on financial news for the media. In this case, the criteria will be an increase in the number of cited statements by bank experts, an increase in the number of calls to the press service, etc. Such indicators can be clearly measured. Evaluation of the effectiveness of a PR campaign is always directly related to its planning, as this allows us to formulate the expected result already at the stage of preparing any PR activity. And conflicts related to misunderstanding and lack of transparency of the results achieved with the help of PR tools are the result of the lack of initially set goals and the ability to measure their own actions with any benchmarks. Practice shows that it is in the interests of a PR consultant not to hush up the situation, expecting that subjective satisfaction will be the basis of the client's assessment of the work, and at the very beginning of the project to discuss how the results of PR activities will be measured. - Performance measurement is not performance evaluation. It is necessary to distinguish between these two concepts. Both are based on the presence of a workable PR strategy and the division of the results of PR activity into short-term and long-term ones. If we mean a single event, the purpose of which is local and not tied to the strategic communication priorities of the company, then we can quite successfully measure the effectiveness of our work. As a rule, this opportunity is provided immediately after the PR event.
However, if we are talking about systematic work on the creation and management of reputation, we are likely to face the need for significant research on the evaluation of the effects achieved as a result of PR activities.
Take, for example, an industry conference in which a company is attending. What can be a successful outcome in the short term? Successful presentation by a newsmaker, an increase in the number of contacts, an increase in the number of requests from journalists, the number of information and promotional materials distributed, etc. In the long term, we will try to determine, for example, how much participation in the conference affected the company's expert status, or evaluate the number of requests for additional information . - Evaluation of effectiveness should not exceed the value of the PR campaign itself. This thesis is directly related to the timing of the implementation of the PR program: if we are aimed at long-term work on building an image and reputation, we should definitely collect empirical data periodically in order to check the correctness of the chosen direction and demonstrate the results. As a rule, in such campaigns, performance evaluation becomes a recurring project that requires no less resources than the current PR activity. For these reasons, the task of communication audit can be outsourced (writing custom programs for other companies).
Criteria for evaluating effectiveness
According to the classical theory of communication by G. Lasswell, the scheme of the act of communication is as follows: WHO - informs WHAT - through which CHANNEL - TO WHOM - with what EFFECT. For any structural component of communication, criteria can be developed by which the results of PR actions can be measured, but only the measurement of effects gives a complete real picture of the effectiveness of PR. Thus, the analysis of the totality of all elements of the act of communication allows us to comprehensive assessment effectiveness of PR.
Below are the criteria for each component of the communication structure: see table. 1.
Structural element | Criteria examples |
| WHO |
|
| WHAT |
|
| CHANNEL |
|
| TO WHOM |
|
| EFFECT |
|
Of course, this list is not exhaustive, but, as a rule, the positive dynamics of most of these parameters makes it possible to judge the high efficiency of the measures taken.
One of the most common criteria for the effectiveness of PR campaigns is the mention in the media. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that mentioning has both a quantitative and a qualitative dimension. In addition to increasing the number of references, the task of improving the quality of reference is always meant (transition from the regional to the central press, access to the pages of leading business publications).
Consider an example of an information campaign we conducted for a large energy company. Before the start of the information campaign, about 40 publications were published in the central press in 8 months, a significant part of the materials accounted for background references and specialized industry media. The attention of the leading business media was mainly related to the conflict situation around the subsidiary.
During the 4 months of the information campaign, communication channels have changed: 36 publications appeared in the leading high-rated central media and 5 television broadcasts (NTV, ORT). In the course of the campaign, the nature of the materials changed significantly: publications now represented a meaningful assessment of the client's activities, analytical articles, client interviews with expert assessments of processes in the fuel and energy complex.
Methods for evaluating effectiveness
Directly related to the criteria that we consider as a priority for this project.
In the practice of leading PR agencies, both variations of classical methods and their own "proprietary" methods are used. So, you can demonstrate the economic efficiency of a PR campaign by calculating the advertising cost of publications that came out as a result of a PR event, for example, a press conference.
Despite the variety of existing methods, I would like to dwell in more detail on the interpretation of two classical approaches: content analysis and the expert survey method.
Content analysis
It is often used as the main tool for evaluating the effectiveness of a company's PR activity.
Content analysis can be a complex multi-level tool for assessing the effectiveness of PR activities. We can use its various possibilities to study both the short-term results and the long-term effects of our actions.
For example, the effectiveness of a press conference can be assessed by how many journalists were accredited to the event, representatives of which publications came, how many of them wrote materials and, finally, in which media materials the key messages that we laid down in the process were used. event preparation. You can use such criteria for studying the media space as the source of information (newspaper, magazine, federal / regional media, on-line publications), publication date, material genre (market review, editorial, interview, background publication, etc.), dynamics news stories, etc.
The most productive is the analysis of the information field in terms of informational occasions and key messages. To conduct such a study, it is better to involve a significant array (for six months or a year) of media materials using both the federal and regional press. An analysis of informational occasions gives us the opportunity to trace which events in the company's activities invariably arouse the interest of the media, and which ones go unnoticed. The study of the dynamics of the image includes, first of all, an analysis of the distribution of key messages - semantic attitudes that make up the main content of media messages.
As part of the evaluation of the effectiveness of the PR program of a large federal-scale company, a content analysis of media messages was carried out, which was a study of the information activity of the company for six months. The results of the analysis showed that the image of the company is greatly influenced by the image of its shareholders. At the same time, more than 40% of all negative references to the company were related to one of the shareholders.
A significant proportion of negative messages is occupied by the topic of social risks (16%) and the risk of rising prices for the company's services (19%), which is primarily due to the social sensitivity of the industry in which the company operates.
The analysis of positive messages also showed a number of patterns. In most positive publications, the company was associated primarily with improving the quality of services throughout the industry (47%) and quite often (about 14% of all positive mentions) was considered as a pioneer in reforming the industry, which made it possible to use rhetoric reflecting strategic development priorities in a further information campaign industries.
Perhaps the most interesting in terms of results (although the most difficult to implement) is the analysis of the information field in relation to the presented images, metaphors and causal relationships. The results of this kind of research can be presented both in the traditional way and in the form of cognitive maps that graphically show a consistent representation of the relationships between concepts. For example, when analyzing the topic “banking crisis”, we can obtain results according to which the most common logical link in publications is “the appearance of “black” lists of banks - the growth of the banking crisis”, and the least common link is “the appearance of black lists - an increase in the number of depositors” .
Expert survey
This is a rather expensive and time-consuming tool, so it should not be used only to measure the effectiveness of an ongoing PR campaign. At the same time, an expert survey is an excellent way to measure attitudes towards the subject of PR activities among elite groups. Very often, it is the expert community that is one of the most important target groups of PR activities; the vector of PR activity is aimed at changing the opinion of the community. Regular expert surveys make it possible to reveal the dynamics of the attitude of experts to the subject of research, to determine both polar opinions and some general vector of sentiments within a given group of professionals.
The theory says that the best constructed survey should be carried out within the framework of the initially formed expert panel, however, practice shows that approximately the 10th, maximum 15th expert interview leads us to a state of theoretical saturation, when we stop receiving new knowledge. Therefore, it is still important to expand the panel of experts and strive to include groups of experts representing different points of view in the survey.
As part of the evaluation of the communication program of a large company, we conducted 2 expert surveys with a difference of six months. The results of the first survey recorded the cautious attitude of the expert community towards the creation of a company, the presence of stable negative associations with the industry, low awareness of the company's plans and business strategy, and lack of knowledge about the company's leaders. The second survey showed that the vast majority of experts demonstrated an understanding of the company's main priorities, and began to evaluate its initiatives and activities of managers much more loyally. The company consolidated the image of the initiator of improvement in the expert community legislative framework and new technological approaches, has increased the attractiveness of the entire industry. Thus, the expert survey made it possible to fix the dynamics of the company's image, the growth of loyalty of the target audience, the development of public images of the company's key newsmakers.
The practice of expert surveys shows that it takes from 6 to 9 months of systematic PR work to significantly master the expert space, increase the loyalty of experts and the emergence of experts who adhere to a point of view similar to ours.
Practical Conclusions
Thus, at present, in the activities of not only large, but also medium-sized companies, there is a tendency to form strategic communications that involve planning PR activities and the possibility of evaluating its effectiveness.
At the planning stage of PR activities, a number of questions should be answered (these answers will subsequently set the criteria for evaluating effectiveness):
- What are the goals of a PR activity or communication program? Can they be expressed in such a way that they can be measured?
- Which of the managers and employees of the company can be its public representative?
- What are the main themes and key messages that we are interested in spreading?
- What are our target audiences?
- What communication channels have been used and are planned to be used in the future?
- What is the strategy and tactics for the implementation of PR-activity? What tools are we planning to use?
- What are the planning horizons for a PR program or campaign?
- What specific results are our PR activities aimed at, what is the scale of their priority?
- How well do our PR plans fit in with the company's planned advertising, marketing, and internal communications efforts?
- To what extent do the plans for PR activities correspond to the organizational and financial resources allocated for them?
- What external factors and how can affect the implementation of our PR program?
Today, in the market of professional PR services, proposals are being formed to evaluate the effectiveness of communication programs and strategies, both at the planning stage and at the stage of implementation and summing up. In fact, there is a new line of activity related to the implementation of a communication audit. We hope that the approaches proposed in this article will be useful to the subjects of PR activity and will help to increase the efficiency of PR activities of companies and the prosperity of their business.
Ekaterina Stenyakina
The problem of evaluating the effectiveness of PR campaigns and PR actions has always been very controversial in the professional environment. Is it possible to objectively evaluate the results of the campaign and the effectiveness of the funds invested in it?
In reality, performance evaluation often comes down to the task of a PR consultant to convince his client that everything has been done correctly and the result has been achieved. Sometimes evaluating the effectiveness of PR activities can come down to subjective factors, for example, whether management liked it.
If in advertising the effectiveness of a campaign can be somehow calculated, for example, through the level of growth in sales of a product, then it is much more difficult to assess changes in public attitudes towards your company. Some researchers believe that all attempts to find objective criteria for evaluating PR programs are simply meaningless, since the effect is incalculable, too multifaceted and long in time. This approach to the problem does not suit clients who would like to see what the paid PR campaigns led to, what the end result is and how effectively the work was carried out.
The way out, which can suit both parties, is to evaluate by quantitative and "rational" methods those parts of the result that can be assessed and calculated, and on the basis of these data to make more objective judgments about the "incalculable whole" (result).
Norman Stone names some of the following results that are calculable:
1. Percentage change in concern (concern, interest, etc.), calculated by a sociological survey.
2. Growth in the number of requests (applications) received.
3. Reducing the number of complaints received.
4. Frequency of mention in the press (media monitoring before the start of a PR campaign, in the process and some time after completion).
5. Ability to see or hear a certain opinion (poll of experts).
6. Improving the company's position in the market in relation to competitors (market research).
7. Time spent achieving certain market positions or capturing a certain market share.
In each specific situation, you can find other "countable" components of the final result. But do not forget that the purpose of evaluating the above results is to confirm the effectiveness of PR activities. Such methods are only additional “levers” in persuading people who are accustomed to considering the result in numbers, percentages, graphs and coefficients.
In cases where the study does not allow obtaining adequate estimates, PR specialists use the so-called equivalent advertising cost ratio"EAV (Equivalent Advertising Value)". EAV shows the ratio of advertising and PR expenses for placement of materials of the same volume in the media. For example, during the campaign, a PR agency provided publications in the press about a client organization for an amount equivalent to a certain advertising budget. To calculate EAV, the total volume of all published publications (of course, “favorable”) is determined and it is calculated how much it would cost to place an advertisement of the same volume in the same publications (taking into account advertising rates at the time of publication of publications and discounts for placement in various publications). Sometimes PR costs turn out to be several times lower (sometimes dozens of times) than possible advertising costs, which for some may look quite convincing.
The EAV ratio does not evaluate the effectiveness of the entire PR campaign, it reflects the cost effectiveness of producing a certain product (which, perhaps, no one will buy). Therefore, EAV can be effectively used for evaluation in those PR models, the purpose of which is to achieve fame, publicity or "mention in the press", and in a comprehensive study of publications (media coverage), on the basis of which conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of the campaign.
Most methods for evaluating the effectiveness of a PR campaign combine monitoring and media research, as well as sociological surveys both in the organization and among its public. For example, English company Paragon Communications has developed a relatively inexpensive methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of PR campaigns, which consists of seven "modules":
1. Evaluation of messages, publications and PR techniques used.
2. Telephone surveys of the media (up to 25 media).
3. Telephone surveys of decision makers and public opinion leaders (up to 50 people).
4. Survey of consumers on a ready-made computer database (2000 people).
5. Postal survey of employees (at home addresses).
6. Telephone interviews with those who attended the events of the PR program and those who did not attend.
7. Annual ongoing research in relation to sponsorships (more than 6,000 respondents annually).
Given that expensive PR campaigns require accurate and reliable methods for evaluating their effectiveness, the development of such methods is in increasing demand in the PR technology market. An objective evaluation of effectiveness requires additional (and sometimes very serious) costs, which are considered unjustified, especially in situations where the effect of PR activities is subjectively “understandable” or “obvious”. In this regard, many communication companies in the 90s began to specialize in the development and sale of methods for evaluating the effectiveness of both "general" and specific programs.
"Tulchinsky Method"
St. Petersburg professor G. Tulchinsky in his work “PR firms: technology and efficiency” and a number of publications in the journal “Sovietnik” offers his own original method for measuring the effectiveness of PR.
G. Tulchinsky, following many PR specialists, believes that the central problem of PR is the problem of efficiency. The situation is getting worse main feature PR: this activity, unlike marketing and advertising, does not imply an increase in turnover, profits, or sales volumes “here and now”.
PR is a tool for establishing, maintaining and spreading trust, creating and strengthening reputation, expanding influence, that is, it is focused on achieving a long-term result that cannot be rigorously assessed immediately after the event (postevent). PR-technologies are not designed to create a reputation at a time, but it can be formed in the process of systematic thoughtful work. According to G. Tulchinsky, it is appropriate to use PR tools to create a positive, attractive image of the company and its top officials in the eyes of various public groups, building trusting relationships with influence groups. They contribute to the formation of public opinion about the activities of the company, the expansion of spheres and opportunities for influence, the establishment of permanent and trusting relations with the media and authorities, and the provision of favorable internal corporate relations.
Given the specified specifics of PR, special attention should be paid to measuring the effectiveness of this activity. One can proceed from the recognition that today critical factors business development have become different:
The main task now is not to increase production, but to adapt people to the changes associated with the introduction of more effective technologies;
Competitiveness is determined not so much by the quality of production management as by the attitude towards the product of consumers and agents and dealers responsible for its implementation;
The main thing in working with personnel is not labor and technological discipline, but the formation of people's motivation for a career in this particular company;
Financial activity consists not so much in cost planning, but in skillful work with investors.
No wonder modern management is called "management by weak signals." And the success of a business largely depends not on the ability to solve well-structured tasks with specific parameters, but on the ability to take into account and use the implicit impulses of the environment and manage resistance - external and internal [for more details, see 9].
So that the desire to demonstrate the effectiveness of PR activities does not look like wishful thinking, one should clearly understand the conceptual content of effectiveness, its types and levels. It must be remembered that there is no efficiency "in general" - its content is always concrete in its relativity. In the case of PR, this circumstance is especially important.
First of all, it is necessary to distinguish between such types of efficiency as:
cost-benefit ratio(E = P / 3), expressing the efficiency of the use of funds and resources - the higher the efficiency, the lower the cost to achieve the result;
relation of the result to the goals pursued(E = R / C), expressing the degree of implementation of the goals of the activity - the higher the efficiency, the more the results correspond to the goals;
correspondence goals real needs, problems(E \u003d C / P), expressing the degree of rationality of the goals put forward - the higher the efficiency, the more goals achieved solve real problems.
With some degree of conventionality, these types of efficiency can be respectively defined as "economy", "effectiveness" and "expediency"[for details see 9].
The final expression of efficiency E \u003d C / P x R / C x R / 3 can be simplified due to the obvious mathematical transformation (abbreviation C) to the form E \u003d R / P x R / 3.
Thus, efficiency is specific, and one must know which form of it is being discussed in each individual case or which of them is the most significant in relation to a given situation and task. Moreover, each of the types of effectiveness of PR activities changes its specific content depending on the level of analysis.
As first level of analysis the effectiveness of a separate PR campaign, a specific event with a specific target group can be considered.
Second level of analysis- the effectiveness of the company's PR activities for a certain period, for example, for a year.
Third level- the effectiveness of PR in the social environment as a whole.
Rice. 10.1. Levels of PR effectiveness analysis
It is obvious that the characteristics of efficiency at each of the levels of analysis may not only not coincide, but also come into conflict with each other. For example, achieving the immediate goals of a one-time project can negatively affect the position and reputation of the company in the long term, destabilize the situation in the social environment. Even more clearly, the content of efficiency can be presented in a table correlating the characteristics necessary for analysis:
The table gives an idea of the "field of analysis" of efficiency. According to G. Tulchinsky, each characteristic at each level should be expressed in specific indicators. The easiest way is with costs (in rubles, in pieces of equipment, in man-hours of labor costs, etc.), since they are quantifiable. Not so problematic is the expression of the results of activities at all levels. It is much more difficult with indicators of goals and needs, but definitions can also be found for them, including those that have a quantitative expression.
Rice. 10.2. PR effectiveness analysis field
The main parameters that need to be taken into account when analyzing the effectiveness of PR include:
Informing the public, contributing to the promotion of new ideas and projects;
Development of staff motivation in order to strengthen its cohesion;
Deepening mutual understanding between the firm and its social environment, excluding unpleasant surprises;
Entering new markets, formulating new ideas and projects that open up new prospects for the development of the company;
Overcoming isolationism and isolation in management.
Since much of the performance analysis depends on the primary basis of comparison, the changes that arise as a result of PR work should be compared with clear and systematic data on the initial state of affairs. Such a comparison can be reflected in the form of a table, which can be both summary and differentiated for each specific addressee and target group of PR.
Components of the social environment (PR recipients)
Of course, it is possible to trace the effectiveness and as a ratio of costs for a specific PR program of changes in the social environment. But this relationship is complex. Nevertheless, the more obvious and clearer this dependence is presented, the more convincing the arguments about the effectiveness of managerial PR activities will sound [for more details, see 9].
The concept of "efficiency" is one of the main concepts of modern management. Measuring the effectiveness of business activities, whether it is the launch of a new product on the market, the installation of new equipment, a change in the organizational structure, or something else, is one of the key tasks of management. As the American philosopher Alasdair McIntyre notes, the concept of efficiency, as it is embodied in the theory and practice of managerial roles and character, is associated with the concepts social control manifested in corporations, government agencies, labor unions and other institutions. He goes on to say that efficiency in management has no rational justification, but only serves as a means of maintaining an expert monopoly on management on the part of management.
At the same time, in some cases, the evaluation of effectiveness is limited due to the specifics of the area where the measurement of effectiveness is supposed. Even economic efficiency often cannot be unambiguously determined, since in the end it is a question of taking into account a significant number of additional factors.
As already noted, the problem of measuring effectiveness in PR and advertising is one of the most important and difficult to resolve issues. modern theory and public communications practices. At the same time, in the case of advertising, a number of fairly effective methods for determining effectiveness have been developed. All methods for measuring the effectiveness of advertising can be combined into two groups:
Economic and statistical;
Sociological.
In many cases, economic and statistical methods allow indirectly determining the level of effectiveness of an advertising campaign based on changes in sales volumes, the activity of consumers contacting call centers, and the dynamics of financial indicators.
Sociological methods make it possible to obtain the following information:
1. The level of recognition of the product and brand;
2. The level of confidence in the product, brand;
3. Attitude to the product (trademark) in comparison with the attitude to other brands and products.
However, even in advertising, the reliability of economic-statistical and sociological methods varies within fairly wide limits. In the first case, it is difficult to separate the consequences caused by the influence of advertising from the influence of other factors (seasonal fluctuations in demand, conjuncture, fashion, competitors' actions). In the second case, the reliability of the obtained sociological data depends on the careful design of the sample and the content of the questions. To date, the problem of evaluating the effectiveness of the most poorly developed in PR. The solution to this problem is difficult for the following reasons:
1. PR events are not strictly tied to any quantitative indicators (growth in sales, increase in awareness, etc.);
2. Often PR is focused on influencing highly specialized target audiences, the possibilities of influencing which in other ways are limited for one reason or another;
3. The results of PR are qualitative in nature - a change in perception, receiving additional information etc.
In general, attempts to "rigid" assessment of the results of PR have not been successful so far.
Myths about the effectiveness of PR
The problem of measuring the effectiveness of PR is still one of the main ones in the theory and practice of public relations. Russian and foreign experts are actively discussing this topic, offering their own solutions. For example, Sergei Belenkov proposed to get rid of a number of myths around the effectiveness of PR.
Myth one: the formal success of the client is a universal and final indicator of the quality of PR-support.
But, thus, it should be recognized that for a long time people from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation managed to do one of the highest quality "PR" in Russia, since it was this party that was in the lead in all elections.
This myth again leads away from the assessment of quality by the content of the communication process towards its qualification by external formal components. Meanwhile, media-buying can be high-quality, psychological, purposeful, or it can be primitively agitational, complimentary and false.
Myth three: The main quality criterion is customer satisfaction.
It turns out that the satisfaction of the client with any of his appearances on the TV screen is in itself, and the reaction of the target audience to this appearance is in itself.
Finally, myth four: The quality of PR is extremely difficult to measure, almost impossible. Only three per cent of British practitioners surveyed in a 1999 survey were of a different opinion.
The roots of such pessimism are not least associated with the absolutization of the media effect of PR. The number of publications is easy to calculate, it is easy to report these figures to the client. However, the “PR people” themselves, less than anyone else, harbor illusions about the real price, objectivity, and mobilizing effect of many newspaper clippings that they file with their reports [for more details, see 1]. S. Belenkov believes that it is quite possible to assess the quality of PR if one focuses on Western experience, involves external communication auditors and conducts public opinion polls before and after the completion of a PR campaign.
There are some international standards for measuring the effectiveness of PR.
One of the most effective is the method of standardization, the development of special norms and rules that should be followed. Thus, the Minimum Quality Standards for PR (MQS) were born in the international community. The minimum quality standards were developed by qualified experts from the three largest international organizations: IPRA, ICO and CERP. These standards may well serve as the basis for monitoring the quality of PR services and, accordingly, for improving this quality. These requirements in no way relate to the content of the work, that is, what needs to be done, they only concern the process, that is, how to do it. If during the implementation of a specific project for the organization public relations all the necessary links in the technological chain are taken into account, then the quality level of this project cannot fall below a certain level. If some technological links are forgotten or ignored, then the probability of success decreases, and even with additional efforts, the quality may suffer [see. 1]. The pharmaceutical industry uses similar international GMP standards, which provide for control not only over the production process itself, but over the entire complex of factors accompanying it: the quality of raw materials, the organizational structure of the company, the organization of management and financial accounting, etc.
The system for evaluating the effectiveness of PR has received sufficient development in Germany. German specialists use several concepts that are close in meaning, but differ in content, to distinguish between various aspects of PR performance:
"impact" - a change in cognitive, emotional and behavioral attitudes as a result of the campaign;
"effect" - the ratio of the goals set and the results achieved;
"efficiency" - the ratio of the effect obtained and the funds and resources spent.
At the same time, only the last category can be considered as relatively economic (when setting the goal, say, of doubling the turnover, the concept of “effect” also falls into this category). The first of the considered categories can be assessed either by expert assessments or through public opinion polls. Based on the work of German authors, some general recommendations can be formulated for measuring the effectiveness of PR. The first group of indicators that indirectly serve to evaluate a PR campaign is the actual results of the work of an agency or corporate PR service:
1. Prepared materials (brochures, press releases, press kits, speeches, speeches, conferences and other events), taking into account their quantity and circulation.
2. Contacts with the media (interviews, inquiries, applications for accreditation at press conferences, etc.).
3. The volume of materials in the media covering the topic (duration of stories, volume in pages), both in quantitative and qualitative terms.
4. Estimated target groups and their number (potential audience of each media, their circulation or rating).
5. Calculation of the expenditure side (comparison with equivalent advertising costs, calculation of the cost of contact).
If pp. 1 and 2 to a greater extent show the performance of specialists, then paragraphs. 3 - 5 can be considered as indirect evidence of the quality of work. By the way, point 5 is considered by many large foreign PR agencies as a key indicator, and this indicator is given in case descriptions.
The second group is formed by the so-called intermediate indicators showing the impact of the developed message on the audience. This group includes:
1. Numerical indicators of the real audience (the number of event participants, the number of club members or assistants in individual promotions).
2. Response of the target group (possible letters, calls, website visits, individual statements on the topic).
3. Other ways of recognizing and evaluating the campaign (prizes and awards professional organizations copying campaigns by other agencies or organizations).
4. Continuation and expansion of the PR program (indicating the recognition of the campaign by the customer's management).
Empirical sociological research (interviews and in-depth interviews, surveys, discussions) showing the attention, understanding and knowledge of the public of the disseminated message.
These intermediate indicators can be considered as relatively objective criteria for the campaign, especially in cases where the impact is aimed at a mass audience.
The end result could be the achievement of the goal set for the PR campaign, with credible indications of public relations as a tool that contributed to the achievement of this goal. Some of the criteria for a successful campaign include:
1. Changing pre-selected indicators that indicate the achievement of campaign goals for a certain period.
2. Quantitative indicators of how the key message reaches its audience (and its target groups).
3. The presence of a relationship between the stages of the campaign and changes in the indicators of its effectiveness.
However, in general, the measurement of effectiveness in PR is still an acute problem that needs to be solved.
To calculate the effectiveness of PR campaigns, indicators such as:
1. Percentage change in concern, calculated by sociological survey; 2. Growth in the number of requests (applications) received; 3. Reducing the number of complaints received; 4. Frequency of mention in the press; 5. Ability to see or hear a certain opinion; 6. Improvement of the company's position in the market in relation to competitors; 7. Time spent achieving certain market positions or capturing a certain market share.
In cases where the study does not provide adequate estimates, PR specialists use the EAV (Equivalent Advertising Value) ratio to prove the effectiveness of their work. EAV shows the ratio of advertising and PR expenses for placement of materials of the same volume in the media.
It is possible to distinguish the following types of efficiency: the ratio of costs to the results obtained ("economical"); the ratio of the result to the goals pursued (“effectiveness”); compliance of goals with real needs, problems (“expediency”).
One of the areas of PR and business communications is the development of intra-corporate communications. In general, the assessment of the level of satisfaction of employees with internal corporate communications was sufficiently developed by the 70s of the XX century, since it was an element of the developed field of management consulting. Mostly information about the degree of employee satisfaction with the corporate communications system was obtained in the course of questionnaire surveys and personal (face-to-face) interviews. Economic efficiency is an opportunity to evaluate the costs of corporate communications in a company. Effectiveness is a diversified assessment of each communication channel compared to other channels. This assessment takes into account not only financial performance, but also the quality of communication in terms of perception of information by company employees.
The system for evaluating the effectiveness of PR has received sufficient development in Germany. German experts use several concepts that are close in meaning, but differ in content, to distinguish between various aspects of the effectiveness of PR: “impact” - a change in cognitive, emotional and behavioral attitudes as a result of the campaign; "effect" - the ratio of the goals set and the results achieved; "efficiency" - the ratio of the effect obtained and the funds and resources spent.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of internal communications
One of the areas of PR and business communications is the development of intra-corporate communications. In Russia, relatively little attention has been paid to this area so far, while in Western companies corporate communications are considered as one of key functions PR services. American company Sinickas Com (www.sinicom.com) , led by Angela Sinickas 1, specializes in evaluating the effectiveness and measuring the effectiveness of internal and external corporate communications. Next, we consider the corporate communications assessment model proposed by Angela Sinikas in a number of articles published in the journals "International communication focus", "Journal of Employee Communication Management", "Harvard Management Communication Letter" and others.
Measurements of corporate communications are relatively a little story. In the early 1970s, the field of measurement in corporate communications was represented by separate questions that were asked to employees during internal surveys.
Belenkov S. In Search of the Philosopher's Stone Formula PR // Advisor. No. 7 (67).
2. Cutlip S.M., Senter A.H., Broom G.M. Public relations: Theory and practice: Uch. settlement 8th ed. Per. from English. M.: Vil-yame, 2000. 624 p: ill. pp. 84-92, 114-116.
3. Lebedev-Lyubimov A.N. Psychology of advertising. St. Petersburg: Pi-ter, 2003.
4. Macintyre A. After Virtue: Studies in Moral Theory. M: Academic Project, 2000. S. 106.
5. Newsom D., VanSlyk D.T., Krkeberg D. All about PR: Theory and practice of public relations. Moscow: Image contact; In-fra-M, 2001.
6. Pocheptsov G.G. Theory of communication. Kyiv: Refl-book; Wackler, 2001.
7. Serebryakov S Monitoring the effectiveness of PR as the first task of German specialists. Book review PR-Erfolgskontrolle. Frankfurt: IMK der Verlags-gruppe Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, 1995 // Adviser. No. 7 (67).
8. Teleshova Yu.N. Measurement in Sociology: A Course of Lectures. M.: Infra-M, 1998.
9. Tulchinsky GL. PR firms: technology and efficiency. St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 2000.
10. PR today: new approaches, research, international practice. Per from English. M.: Image contact: Infra-M, 2002.
11. Sinickas A.D. Tracking the evolution of our work by the revolution in communication measurement //Journal of employee communication management.
12. Sinickas A.D. Linking internal communication measures to business goals // Internal communication focus. 1997. October.
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF RUSSIA
federal state budgetary educational institution
higher professional education
"Volga State Social and Humanitarian Academy"
History department
Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Methods of Teaching History
Psychological and pedagogical approaches to assessing the results of competence- oriented education
Completed:
third-year full-time student
Budylev S.M.
Scientific adviser:
Candidate of Pediatric Sciences, Associate Professor O.A. Smagina
Samara 2013
Introduction
Chapter I. Theoretical foundations for assessing learning outcomes in competency-based education
1 Concepts and essence of evaluation of learning outcomes in competence-based education
2 Features of competence-based education
Conclusions on Chapter I
Chapter II. Ways and means of assessing learning outcomes in competency-based education
1 Features of the psychological and pedagogical approach to assessing learning outcomes
2 Ways and means of implementing competence-based education
Conclusions on Chapter II
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
The purpose of this work is to substantiate the ways of implementing the assessment of learning outcomes in competence-based education.
The relevance of this work lies in the fact that competence-based education comes first in the educational process. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate all the advantages and disadvantages of the competence-based approach. There is a need for new data, as there is no clear formulation of how to move from one model of education to another.
The research problem is how the competence-based approach affects the quality of education.
The object of the study is the assessment of learning outcomes. And the subject of the work is competence-oriented education as a condition for achieving the goal of modern education.
The research hypothesis is that the implementation of competence-based education will be effective if:
comprehend the theoretical foundations of the competence-oriented approach;
identify the concepts and essence of the quality of education;
To characterize the means of implementing competence-oriented education in the educational process.
The main objectives of the study:
To study the theoretical foundations of competence-oriented education;
Define the concepts and essence of the quality of education;
To analyze the ways and means of implementing competence-oriented education in a modern school.
Theoretical and practical significance: in modern society it becomes important to put into practice the acquired knowledge in school. It should be taught in such a way that a person can be retrained throughout his life. With the help of competence-oriented education, knowledge becomes the cognitive base of human competence.
Research methods:
Study of the conceptual and theoretical base;
Study and generalization of advanced pedagogical experience.
Main literature:
· G. B. Golub, E. A. Perelygina, O. V. Churakova. The method of projects is the technology of competence-oriented education. Samara: 2006.
IN this manual the methodological and didactic aspects of competence-oriented education are considered.
· E.A. Samoilov. Competence-oriented education: socio-economic, philosophical and psychological foundations. Monograph. Samara: 2006.
The monograph analyzes the socio-economic, philosophical and psychological foundations of competence-based education in society.
· Zimnyaya I.A., Competence approach: what is its place in the system modern approaches to the issue of education? (theoretical and methodological aspect)//Higher education today. 2006. No. 8., p. 20-26.
The article discusses the place of competence-oriented education in the modern educational process.
· I.I. Menyaeva. Competence-oriented education - priority innovative activities of the school. Samara: Fort, 2008
“Stuffed with knowledge but not able to apply it in practice, a student resembles a stuffed fish that cannot swim” Academician A.L. Mints.
· Modernization of educational systems: from strategy to implementation: Collection of scientific papers / Nauch. ed. V.N. Efimov, under the general. ed. T.G. Novikova. - M.: APK and PRO, 2004. - 192p.
The paper analyzes the ways of implementing competence-oriented education in the educational process.
· Zolotareva, A.V. Performance monitoring educational institution. - Yaroslavl, Publishing House of YaGPU named after. K.D. Ushinsky, 2006.
In this paper, monitoring is considered as an assessment of the result of students' activities.
Chapter I. Theoretical foundations for assessing learning outcomes in competency-based education
1.1 Concepts and essence of evaluation of learning outcomes in competence-based education
Due to the fact that in September 2003 Russia acceded to the Bologna Declaration, the direction of the domestic education system has changed. A course was taken to modernize this important system for society. For most of the Soviet period Russian education its competence program was based on the so-called principle of “knowledge, skills, and skills” and included a theoretical justification, definition of the nomenclature, hierarchy of knowledge, skills, methods of their formation, control and evaluation.
However, the changes taking place in the world and in Russia in the field of education goals, correlated, in particular, with the global task of ensuring the entry of a person into the social world, his productive adaptation in this world, necessitate the question of providing education with a more complete, personal and socially integrated result. As a general definition of such an integral social-personal-behavioral phenomenon as a result of education in the aggregate of motivational-value, cognitive components, the concept of "competence and competence" was used.
Practice has proved that modern education can no longer function successfully in the former content, organizational and - more broadly - pedagogical forms. This means that the new school, the educational system necessarily requires the use of other methods of management, which involves a rethinking basic conditions organization of school life: reformulation of goals, objectives, means, methods of assessment and communication3 .
Questions about how to assess the level of student achievement and what can be assessed are among the "eternal" issues of pedagogy. The reforms that began in our country in the late 80s. The twentieth century, according to G. Kovaleva, were associated with the "humanization of school spaces", that is, work on the "humanization of the views of an expert", humanization of the standard created by him and staying in the "teacher's head", as well as with the objectification of the assessment.
The need for an objective assessment of the results of human activity has always been and remains one of the most significant in any field. human activity. And the more versatile, multifaceted this activity, the more difficult it is to evaluate its result.
An objective assessment of the level of student achievement is intended to:
obtaining objective information about the results achieved by students learning activities and the degree of their compliance with the requirements of educational standards;
identifying positive and negative trends in the teacher's activities;
establishing the reasons for the increase or decrease in the level of students' achievements with the aim of subsequent correction educational process.
In the document “Strategy for the modernization of the structure and content general education» emphasizes that the current system for assessing the quality of educational achievements of students in general education school difficult to meet the requirements of modernizing education. The most serious disadvantages include:
the orientation of the assessment solely on external control, accompanied by pedagogical and administrative sanctions, and not on supporting motivation aimed at improving educational results;
the predominant orientation of control and evaluation tools to check the reproductive level of assimilation, to check only factual and algorithmic knowledge and skills.
The planned changes in the system of general secondary education cannot be achieved without a significant transformation of the system for assessing the quality of students' educational achievements and the quality of education in general.
It is difficult not to agree with the opinion of T.G. Novikova and A.S. Prutchenkov that in the process of modernizing the control system, it is advisable to preserve and disseminate all the positive that has been accumulated in a number of schools in the country for last years(introduction of monitoring of educational achievements within the framework of level differentiation in education; the use of various forms of control in the final certification of students, the introduction of computer testing, etc.), and change what hinders the development of the education system (subjectivity of assessments, a predominant focus on verification of factual material, insufficient the use of control tools that form the interest of each student in the results of their cognitive activity, the incompatibility of the results of control in schools, the insufficient preparedness of teachers and school administrations to use modern means of measuring the level of educational achievements, etc.).
Studies of a number of works by scientists allow us to conclude that one of the reasons for the lagging behind in learning is a poorly developed ability to critically evaluate the results of their educational activities. At present, the need for a search effective ways organization of evaluation activities of teachers and students4 .
The main conditions for the modernization of the system for monitoring and evaluating educational achievements, outlined in the Concept for the Modernization of Russian Education until 2010, were:
openness of requirements for the level of training of students and control procedures for all participants in the educational process: students, parents, teachers, specialists, the general public;
creation of a system for assessing the achievement of the requirements of educational standards in the process of current and final control, adequate to new educational goals and aimed at improving the education system; standardization and objectification of the assessment of the quality of training of school graduates with the help of an external control system;
the introduction, in addition to the traditional ones, of new types, forms, methods and means of assessing the dynamics of students' advancement in the educational process, which contribute to increasing motivation and interest in learning, as well as taking into account individual characteristics students.
The results of the international PISA study showed the need to change not only the system for assessing student learning achievements. The ability of the student to solve problems that poses to him should also be assessed. school life.
It is important to reorient control to assess the ability to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in the learning process in various life situations.
It is necessary that the modernized system should work in a “mode of constant correction and updating, taking into account, on the one hand, the real teaching practice and, on the other hand, needs community development».
Often in psychological and especially pedagogical literature, the concepts of "assessment" and "mark" are identified. However, the distinction between these concepts is extremely important for a deeper understanding of the psychological, pedagogical, didactic and educational aspects of the evaluation activities of teachers.
First of all, evaluation is a process, an activity (or action) of evaluation carried out by a person. All our tentative and in general any activity in general depends on the assessment. The accuracy and completeness of the assessment determine the rationality of moving towards the goal.
Evaluation functions, as is known, are not limited only to the statement of the level of learning. Evaluation is one of the effective means at the disposal of the teacher, stimulating learning, positive motivation, and influencing the personality. It is under the influence of objective assessment that schoolchildren develop an adequate self-esteem, a critical attitude towards their successes. Therefore, the significance of assessment and the diversity of its functions require the search for indicators that would reflect all aspects of schoolchildren's educational activities and ensure their identification. From this point of view, the current system of assessing knowledge and skills requires revision in order to increase its diagnostic significance and objectivity. A mark (score) is the result of the evaluation process, activity or action of evaluation, their conditionally formal reflection. Identification of evaluation and mark, from a psychological point of view, will be tantamount to identifying the process of solving a problem with its result. Based on the assessment, a mark may appear as its formal-logical result. But, in addition, the mark is a pedagogical stimulus that combines the properties of encouragement and punishment: a good mark is an encouragement, and a bad mark is a punishment.
Assessment is usually subject to the available knowledge of schoolchildren and the knowledge and skills they have shown. Knowledge, skills and abilities should be assessed primarily in order to outline ways for both the teacher and the student to improve, deepen, and refine them. It is important that the student's assessment reflects the prospects of working with this student and for the teacher, which is not always realized by the teachers themselves, who consider the mark only as an assessment of the student's performance. In many countries, student grades as a basis for assessing educational performance are one of the most important indicators of the quality of education6 .
In contrast to the formal - in the form of a score - the nature of the mark, the assessment can be given in the form of detailed verbal judgments, explaining to the student the meaning of the then "folded" assessment - the mark.
Researchers have found that a teacher's assessment leads to a favorable educational effect only when the student internally agrees with it. For well-performing schoolchildren, a coincidence between their own assessment and the assessment given to them by the teacher occurs in 46% of cases. And for those with poor progress - in 11% of cases. According to other researchers, the coincidence between the teacher's and the student's own assessment occurs in 50% of cases. It is clear that the educational effect of the assessment will be much higher if the students understand the requirements placed on them by teachers7 .
The results of the control of educational and cognitive activity of students are expressed in its assessment. To evaluate means to establish the level, degree or quality of something.
Grade- a qualitative indicator (for example, "You are well done!").
mark- quantitative indicator (five or ten-point scale, percent).
Stages of development of a five-point rating scale:
) May 1918 - the decision of A.V. Lunacharsky "On the abolition of marks";
) September 1935 - five verbal (verbal) ratings were introduced: "very bad", "bad", "mediocre", "good", "excellent";
) January 1944 - return to the digital "five-point" system for assessing academic performance.
1.2 Features of competence-based education
The meaning of competence-oriented education lies in the dialectical synthesis of academic and pragmatic education, in enriching the subject's personal experience in constructing such educational environment, which contributes to the optimal development of individuality, the uniqueness of the student, taking into account universal values. Thesis " irreplaceable people no" is a thing of the past. Society, culture are enriched, developed due to the uniqueness of their representatives7 .
In accordance with the Modernization Strategy Russian system general secondary education, the teacher is called upon to ensure the integration and continuity of the processes of formation of a complex of universal knowledge, skills, and the formation of key competencies.
Important components of the teacher's readiness for competence-oriented education of schoolchildren are:
the teacher's awareness of the objective need for changes in the educational system and his active position on the problem under consideration;
understanding the essence of the terms "competence", "competence" and "competence-oriented education";
the ability to solve open problems (that is, problems without a clearly defined condition, without a solution algorithm known in advance, with a multiple answer);
possession of methods, algorithms for designing a modern educational process for optimizing its elements.
Great importance is attached to activity methods and teaching technologies, since the essence of the concepts discussed is connected precisely with the activities of participants in the educational process8 .
The competence-oriented approach in determining the goals and content of general education is not completely new, and even more so alien to Russian school. Orientation towards the development of skills, methods of activity and, moreover, generalized methods of action was the leading one in the works of such domestic teachers and psychologists as M.N. Skatkin, IYA. Lerner, V.V. Kraevsky, town of settlement Shchedrovitsky, V.V. Davydov and their followers. In this vein, separate educational technologies And educational materials. However, this orientation was not decisive; it was practically not used in the construction of standard curricula, standards, and evaluation procedures.
Competence-oriented education is a process aimed at the formation of the subject in the course of activity, mainly of a creative nature, the ability to connect and methods of activity with educational or life situation for its solution, as well as the acquisition of an effective solution to significant practice-oriented problems9 .
In competence-oriented education, we can talk about the pedagogy of opportunities; the motivation for competence is based on the motivation of compliance and orientation towards the long-term goals of personality development.
Competence-oriented education speaks precisely about the regulation of the result, as required by the letter and spirit of the law.
Competence-oriented education requires the addition of internal teacher control with self-control and self-assessment, the importance of external expert evaluation of alienated products of educational activity, considers rating, accumulative assessment systems more adequate, the creation of a portfolio (portfolio of achievements) as a tool for the student to present himself and his achievements outside the school.
Competence-oriented education speaks of the multiplicity of levels in the possible field of student achievement.
In the competence-based approach, the teacher does not claim to have a monopoly of knowledge, he takes the position of an organizer, a consultant.
In the competence-based approach, the student is responsible for his own progress, he is the subject of his own development, in the learning process he occupies different positions within pedagogical interaction.
In competence-based education, the lesson is preserved as one of the possible forms of organizing learning, but the emphasis is on expanding the use of other, non-curricular forms of organizing classes - a session, a project group, independent work in a library or computer class, etc.
The main unit for organizing material for classes can be not only a lesson, but also a module (case). Therefore, educational books within the framework of the new approach have a structure different from the traditional one - these are materials for organizing classes in a fairly short time (from 10 to 70 hours), the structure of which is indicated not as lessons, but as blocks (modules).
The method closest to competence-oriented education is the experience of organizing a research model of a lesson, a problem-task approach, and situational pedagogy.
The central point in the modernization of education based on the idea of a competency-based approach is the change in teaching methods, which consists in the introduction and testing of forms of work based on the responsibility and initiative of the students themselves.
There is another topic for further innovative search - how should the assessment system at school change?
The competency-based approach will allow evaluating a real, and not an abstract, product produced by a student. That is, the system for assessing the level of student achievement should undergo a change first of all. We accept not only educational ones. The student's ability to solve the problems that school life puts before him should be assessed. The educational process should be transformed in such a way that “spaces of real action” appear in it, a kind of “initiative”, to use the conventional language, “student productions”, the products of which (including intellectual ones) are performed not only for the teacher, but for to compete successfully and get the desired score in the domestic (school) and foreign (public) market.
Innovative approaches to learning are divided into two main types, which correspond to the reproductive and problem orientation of the educational process.
Innovation modernization, the educational process aimed at achieving guaranteed results within its traditional reproductive orientation. Transformation innovations that transform the traditional educational process, aimed at ensuring its research nature, organizing search educational and cognitive activities.
Conclusions on Chapter I
The topic of competence-based education is of fundamental importance, because it concentrates the ideas of the emerging new educational system, which is often called anthropological, since the shift vector is directed towards the humanization of social practice.
The actualization of competence-oriented education in recent decades is due to a number of factors. The transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society is associated with an increase in the level of environmental uncertainty, with an increase in the dynamism of the processes, and a multiple increase in the information flow. Market mechanisms in society began to work more actively, role mobility increased, new professions appeared, there were changes in the old professions, because the requirements for them changed - they became more integrated, less special. All these changes dictate the need for the formation of a person who knows how to live in conditions of uncertainty.
The complex of methods of activity obtained in different subject areas at different age stages, in the final analysis, should lead to the formation in the child of generalized methods of activity at the end of the main school, applicable in any activity, regardless of the subject area. These generalized modes of activity can be called competencies.
Another aspect of this education concerns the adequacy of the content of education. modern trends development of the economy, science, public life. The fact is that a number of school skills and knowledge no longer belong to any professional occupation.
In the competency-based approach, the list of required competencies is determined in accordance with the requests of employers, the requirements of the academic community and broad public discussion based on serious sociological research. Mastering various kinds of competencies becomes the main goal and results of the learning process. Competencies and competency-based approach occupy a central place in the education quality management system.
The basic competence of a teacher lies in the ability to create, organize such an educational, developing environment in which it becomes possible for the child to achieve educational results, formulated as key competencies.
For a school of post-industrial society, it is no longer enough to provide a graduate with knowledge for decades to come. In the labor market and from the point of view of life prospects, the ability and willingness to study and retrain all one's life are becoming more in demand. And for this, apparently, you need to learn in a different way, in other ways.
So, the new quality of education is connected, first of all, with a change in the nature of the relationship between the school, family, society, state, teacher and student. That is, updating the educational process is a meaningful resource for reorienting the school to work in the logic of a different approach to assessing the success of education.
Chapter II. Ways and means of assessing learning outcomes in competency-based education
2.1 Features of the psychological and pedagogical approach to assessing learning outcomes
The adaptability of the education system requires the determination of the compliance of activities with a specific pedagogical system opportunities and educational needs of a particular student. Learning in the conditions of competence-oriented education becomes predominantly an active independent activity, managed through the use of control and diagnostics10 .
Means of control and diagnostics in the new conditions are changing. A marking system that measures only a single specific result becomes insufficient. To track the process of achieving educational goals, tools are needed that make it possible to track and evaluate the dynamics of the process of achieving goals. Thus, there is a need to introduce a cumulative assessment system, which includes monitoring, rating assessment, portfolio known in the domestic education system. Cumulative assessment also includes interviews, business games, self-assessment diaries, the agreement method and other methods used in Western didactics used for assessment.
Cumulative assessments allow students to develop a positive attitude towards learning, as they give them the opportunity to demonstrate how much they know and can do, and not their shortcomings, which is typical of traditional assessment methods. They make the learning process more effective, especially when properly organized and constructive. feedback. New assessment methods such as modeling, practice, role-playing games, allow the student to understand how to apply the acquired skills inside and outside the educational environment. It becomes possible to assess a more diverse range of student skills in more situations. At the same time, not only teachers can evaluate, but also parents, and, most importantly, the student himself11 .
The main characteristics of an effective evaluation are that it focuses on the process and on the product. It is not only what the student is taught that is evaluated, but also what is expected of him. Both teachers and students are actively involved in the assessment process. Evaluation is based on diverse and variable means; evaluation takes place at all stages and levels of learning and provides participants with the necessary information to improve the learning process through feedback. Cumulative valuation, when properly used, fulfills all of these requirements.
It is possible to evaluate the learning outcomes in competence-based education with the help of control as monitoring. Pedagogical monitoring is a form of organizing, collecting, processing, storing and disseminating information about the activities of the teaching staff, which allows you to continuously monitor the state and predict its activities.
In the process of monitoring, trends in the development of the education system, correlated over time, as well as the consequences of decisions taken, are revealed. Within the framework of monitoring, the identification and evaluation of the conducted pedagogical actions is carried out. At the same time, feedback is provided, informing about the compliance of the actual results of the pedagogical system with its ultimate goals.
Monitoring affects various aspects of the life of an educational institution:
analysis of the feasibility of setting goals for the educational process, educational and educational work;
work with personnel and creation of conditions for creative work teachers;
organization of the educational process;
a combination of control with the provision of practical assistance.
The main difference between monitoring the quality of education and control, first of all, is that the task of monitoring is to establish the causes and magnitude of the discrepancy between the result and the goals. In addition, monitoring is systematic and time-consuming, with applied criteria and indicators.
The main monitoring functions include:
diagnostic - scanning the state of the education system and the changes taking place in it, which makes it possible to assess these phenomena;
expert - within the framework of monitoring, it is possible to carry out an examination of the state, concept, forms and methods of development of the education system, its components and subsystems;
informational - monitoring is a way to regularly obtain comparable information about the state and development of the system, necessary for the analysis and forecast of the state and development of the system;
integrative - monitoring is one of the system-forming factors that provide a comprehensive description of processes.
Allocate common features activities:
monitoring objects are dynamic, subject to external influences that can cause various changes in the state of the object;
the implementation of monitoring involves the organization of constant monitoring of the object, the study and assessment of its condition;
the organization of tracking provides for the selection of reasonable criteria and indicators by which the measurement and description of the parameters of the object is carried out;
each specific monitoring system is focused on a specific consumer, which can be both a separate institution and the state as a whole.
It is possible to single out the main types of monitoring by content:
didactic monitoring, the subject of which is neoplasms of the educational process (acquisition of knowledge, skills, compliance of their level with the requirements of the SES, etc.);
educational monitoring, which takes into account changes in the creation of conditions for the education and self-education of students, the "increment" of their educational level;
socio-psychological, showing the level of socio-psychological adaptation of the student's personality;
management activity, showing changes in various management subsystems.
By the nature of the methods and techniques used - statistical and non-statistical monitoring.
Direction:
process monitoring - presents a picture of the factors affecting the implementation of the final goal;
monitoring the conditions for organizing activities - reveals deviations from the planned norm of activities, the level of rationality of activities, the necessary resources;
results monitoring - finds out what was done from the planned, what results were achieved.
When organizing monitoring, it is important to perform the following tasks:
Determine the criteria for the quality of monitoring implementation, develop a set of indicators that provide a holistic view of the state of the system, qualitative and quantitative changes in it.
Select diagnostic tools.
Set the level of compliance of the real state of the object with the expected results.
Systematize information about the state and development of the system.
Provide regular and visual presentation of information about ongoing processes.
Organize Information Support analysis and forecasting of the state and development of the education system, development of managerial decisions.
The information collected during the monitoring process must meet the requirements of objectivity, accuracy, completeness and sufficiency.
Traditional monitoring in the form control works, exams, inspections is not effective enough. First of all, because:
control of the state of learning is irregular, episodic, the dynamics of changes is not revealed;
controlling the results of training, they disregard the learning process itself;
quite subjective scores and integral assessments of the performance of test tasks in general are used, which does not allow us to find out which specific and to what extent elements of the content have not been mastered;
in essence, diagnostic methods are not used to reveal the causes of certain mistakes of students, shortcomings in the work of a teacher, to identify factors that affect academic performance.
Monitoring can be used common methods psychological and pedagogical research - observation, questioning, questioning, testing, experiment. Specific methods are also used - analysis of activity products (for example, documents), methods for studying the state of educational work, game methods, creative reports, methods of expert assessments, analytical and evaluation methods (self-assessment, lesson analysis, scaling, etc.). Mathematical-statistical method is used to process monitoring results.
Monitoring is carried out in the following stages:
Preparatory stage:
formation of an order for monitoring,
selection of the monitoring object,
methodological support monitoring,
definition of criteria and indicators,
creation of a working project or program,
briefing or training of monitoring personnel.
Monitoring stage:
carrying out diagnostics of the system using the selected methods in accordance with the work program,
collection and analysis, storage of results.
Stage of data processing and decision making:
data processing, including mathematical and statistical,
analysis, generalization and systematization of the obtained data,
preparation of the final document,
making decisions,
a set of measures that activate the use of data, including information support for monitoring12 .
Control in a broad sense - checking something, establishing feedback. The control of students' learning activities provides information about the result of their learning activities, contributes to the establishment of external feedback (control performed by the teacher) and internal feedback (student self-control).
2.2 Ways and means of implementing competence-based education
pedagogical monitoring competency-based education
Competence-based education, as opposed to the concept of “acquisition of knowledge” (and in fact the sum of information), involves the development of skills by students that allow them to act effectively in the future in situations of professional, personal and social life. Moreover, special importance is attached to skills that allow you to act in new, uncertain, problem situations for which it is not possible to accumulate appropriate funds in advance. They need to be found in the process of resolving such situations and achieve the required results13 .
In fact, in this approach, the understanding of knowledge as an increase in the amount of subject information is opposed to knowledge as a set of skills that allow you to act and achieve the desired result, often in uncertain, problematic situations.
“We have given up not knowledge as a cultural “object”, but a certain form of knowledge (knowledge “just in case”, that is, information).
What is knowledge in competence-based education. What is a concept.
Knowledge is not information.
Knowledge is a means of transforming the situation.
If knowledge is a means of mentally transforming a situation, then this is a concept.
We are trying to construct concepts in such a way that they become means of transforming situations into action.
Zinchenko V.P. contrasts knowledge and information:
“Information has overwhelmed humanity. This fate has not escaped education, which is increasingly being built according to the type of a “smorgasbord of knowledge” (E. Fromm's expression). The boundaries between them are increasingly blurred, as are the boundaries between knowledge and information. Nevertheless, such limits exist. An experienced teacher can easily distinguish a "know-it-all" and a "quick-hook" from "thoughtful"And "solid"student. Something else is more dangerous: students' illusions that what they remember is what they know. These illusions are still fresh in both pedagogy and psychology. Let's take a look at their background. It is fair to say that knowledge cannot be defined, since it is a primary concept. Several metaphors can be imagined:
An ancient metaphor is a metaphor for a wax tablet on which external impressions are imprinted.
A later metaphor is that of a vessel that is filled either with our external impressions or with text that carries information about these impressions.
Obviously, in the first two metaphors, knowledge is indistinguishable from information. The main means of learning is memory.
The metaphor of Socrates is a metaphor of childbirth: a person has knowledge that he cannot realize on his own, and an assistant is needed who can help give birth to this knowledge by maeutic methods. Gospel metaphor for growing grain. Knowledge grows in the mind of a person, like a grain in the soil, which means that knowledge is not determined by an external message. Knowledge arises as a result of cognitive imagination, stimulated by a message, an intermediary. .
The last two metaphors are much more interesting. In the metaphor of Socrates, the place of the teacher-intermediary is clearly indicated, in the gospel metaphor it is implied. It is important to emphasize that in the last metaphors the cognizer acts not as a "receiver", but as a source of his own knowledge. In other words, we are talking about knowledge as an event. A personal, life event. An event that takes place in the mind of the student. Knowledge is always someone’s, belonging to someone, it cannot be bought (like a diploma), it cannot be stolen from the knower (except perhaps with the head), and information is no man’s territory, it is subjectless, it can be bought, it can be exchanged or stolen, which often happens. Knowledge, becoming a common property, enriches those who know, and information in this case depreciates. Knowledge matters, and information has a purpose at best. Information at its best is a tool that may have a price, but no value. Knowledge has no price, it has vital and personal meaning.
Finally, one more important clarification. There is a subject that generates knowledge, and there is a user that consumes information. Their distinction should not be judged in terms of better or worse. It's just fixing it. Of course, both knowledge and information perform important instrumental functions in human behavior and activity. Information is a temporary, transient, perishable subject. Information is such a tool, a tool that, like a stick, can be discarded after use. Not so with knowledge. Knowledge, of course, is also a means, a tool, but one that becomes a functional organ of the individual. It irreversibly changes the knower. Like a stick you can't throw it away. If we continue this analogy, then knowledge is a staff that helps to go further into the world of knowledge and into the world of ignorance.
Thus, a competency-based approach is a strengthening of the applied, practical nature of everything school education(including subject education). This direction arose from simple questions about what results of school education a student can use outside of school. The key idea of this direction is that in order to ensure “the long-term effect of school education, everything that is studied must be included in the process of use, use. This is especially true of theoretical knowledge, which should cease to be dead baggage and become a practical means of explaining phenomena and solving practical situations and problems.
Another aspect of applicability concerns the adequacy of the content of education to modern trends in the development of the economy, science, and social life. The fact is that a number of school skills and knowledge no longer belong to any professional occupation. An example of such an exotic type of schoolwork can be the whole subject of drawing. This also includes the so-called industrial training, in which girls learn how to sew a skirt, and boys learn how to work on machines that are left only in schools and vocational schools. Here, of course, a revision of the content of education is urgently needed. In the UK, for example, in the process of such a revision, when discussing the standard in mathematics, the topic of multiplication big numbers were excluded in favor of rounding the amounts in the calculation and evaluation of statistical data. In many countries, traditional vocational training and home economics courses have been replaced by courses in Technology and Design, Entrepreneurship, or secondary vocational education courses that provide specific vocational skills in electrical, plumbing, etc. And all this is part of the renovation of the school, which takes place under the slogans of competence-oriented education.
In competency-based education, the list of necessary competencies is determined in accordance with the requests of employers, the requirements of the academic community and broad public discussion based on serious sociological research. Mastering various kinds of competencies becomes the main goal and results of the learning process. Competences and a competence-based approach occupy a central place in the education quality management system. In essence, education quality management begins with determining the composition of those competencies that must be mastered in the educational process at school as educational outcomes. Then the entire intra-school education quality management system is built in such a way that at the end each student would, to one degree or another, possess the required competencies15 .
Conclusions on Chapter II
IN modern conditions we should talk about the presence of many requests that the school must respond to. The real customers of the school are the student, his family, employers, society, professional elites, while maintaining a certain position of the state. For the education system, this means that state educational institutions are obliged, on the one hand, to conduct a dialogue with all consumers of education (the goal is to find a reasonable compromise), and on the other hand, to constantly create, update and multiply the range of educational services, the quality and effectiveness of which will be determined by the consumer. Otherwise, the public school cannot fully fulfill its functions.
For modern school it is no longer enough to provide a graduate with knowledge for decades to come. In the labor market and from the point of view of life prospects, the ability and willingness to study and retrain all one's life are becoming more in demand. And for this, apparently, you need to learn in a different way, in other ways.
So, the new quality of education is associated primarily with a change in the nature of the relationship between the school, family, society, state, teacher and student. That is, updating the educational process is a meaningful resource for reorienting the school to work in the logic of a different approach to assessing the success of education.
The competence-based approach can be attributed to one of the ways to achieve a new quality of education. It determines the priorities, the direction of change in the educational process.
Key competencies as a result of general education mean the readiness to effectively organize one's internal and external resources for decision-making and achievement of the set goal.
List of key student competencies for Samara region, adequate to socio-economic conditions includes:
readiness to solve problems;
technological competence;
readiness for self-education;
readiness to use information resources;
readiness for social interaction.
Competency-oriented education can be understood as the ability to act effectively. The ability to achieve results is to effectively solve a problem.
At school, it is not competence itself that is predominantly formed, but independence in solving problems, the condition of which is the transformation of an objective mode of action (i.e. knowledge, skills) into a means of solving problems. The main innovation of the competency-based approach, therefore, is to create educational conditions transforming modes of action into means of action.
Conclusion
This study is necessary to better understand and understand competence-based education. In most countries of the world, dissatisfaction with the quality of modern education is expressed. In an open, changing world, the traditional educational system, designed to serve the needs of an industrial society, becomes inadequate to the new socio-economic realities.
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Russian psychological and pedagogical publications have been widely discussing the possibilities and advantages of the so-called competence-based learning as an alternative to traditional education. However, there is still no convincing, scientifically based interpretation of the concepts of "competence", "competence", "competence-oriented education" in psychological and pedagogical publications. Therefore, there is a threatening tendency to “call everything competencies”. This discredits the very idea and creates significant difficulties in its practical implementation.
First of all, this is due to the systemic changes that have taken place in the sphere of labor and management. Development information technologies led not only to a tenfold increase in the amount of information consumed, but also to its rapid aging, constant updating. This leads to fundamental changes not only in economic activity, but also in everyday life.
IN this study came to the conclusion that the topic of competence-based education is fundamentally important, because it concentrates the ideas of an emerging new educational system, which is often called anthropological, since the shift vector is directed towards the humanization of social practice.
Competence-oriented education can be attributed to one of the ways to achieve a new quality of education. It determines the priorities, the direction of change in the educational process.
Bibliography
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Zheleznikova T.P. Competence approach in education. - Samara: "etching", 2008.
Zimnyaya I.A., Competence approach: what is its place in the system of modern approaches to the problem of education? (theoretical and methodological aspect)//Higher education today. 2006. No. 8., p. 20-26.
Zolotareva, A.V. Monitoring the performance of an educational institution. - Yaroslavl, Publishing House of YaGPU named after. K.D. Ushinsky, 2006.
Ivanov D.A. Competencies and competency-based approach in modern education.- M.: Chistye Prudy, 2007.
Kaluzhskaya, M.V., Ukolova, O.S., Kamenskikh, I.G. Rating system of evaluation. How? For what? Why? - M .: Chistye Prudy, 2006
Menyaeva I.I. Competence-oriented education is a priority direction of the innovative activity of the school. Samara: Fort, 2008
Modernization of educational systems: from strategy to implementation: Collection of scientific papers / Nauch. ed. V.N. Efimov, under the general. ed. T.G. Novikova. - M.: APK and PRO, 2004. - 192p.
Samoilov E.A. Competence-oriented education. - Monograph. Samara: SGPU, 2006.
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