The first and second year students of Geography Department had their field practice under the guidance of Oleksiy Sytnyk, the Candidate of Geographical Sciences, Associate Professor of Geography and methods of teaching geography of Nature and Geography Department at Pavlo Tychyna USPU.
Field practice for students studying geographic disciplines is an essential part of 6.040104 "Geography" specialty. The role of field practice is utmost important in the educational process to educate the future teachers of geography. The field practice for those studying the geographic disciplines is usually held at the end of term and contributes to the consolidation and deepening of theoretical knowledge acquired by the first and second year students during the study of "Meteorology and Climatology", "General hydrology", "Geomorphology" and other disciplines and helps them acquire practical skills.
During the practice the students are convinced of the importance of what they've learned in the class: a geography teacher should know the current state of geographic shell and some landscapes, their development trends as well as be able to research the individual components of nature. If a future geography teacher utilizes the theoretical knowledge during field practice and develops practical skills, he or she can efficiently teach the students and organize their productive work. Thus, the field practices in meteorology, hydrology and geomorphology included the formation of certain skills and abilities to work with modern devices to monitor the weather conditions, the work of hydrometric and hydrological observations, to describe the contemporary forms of relief so on.
All these tasks were provisionally combined into several groups. The first group of tasks was aimed at familiarization of the students with the general method of field researches and processing of the results. The second group that made the basis of the field practice included direct field research (microclimatic and hydrological observations, educational excursions to determine the characteristics of topography, its changes under the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors, etc.), keeping records on the information obtained. The third group included the tasks of educational work in student groups, of students' skills of self-organization of life during field practice.
Full-scale implementation of all tasks of field practice in meteorology, hydrology and geomorphology enables the future teachers to organize and manage teaching and research work of students methodically right in the time limit and during the extracurricular activities.
The field practice was divided into three phases: preparatory, fieldwork and summing up. The preparatory phase was carried out before the field observations and included familiarization of the students with the purpose, stages and field practice training program in meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology, a set of instructional and organizational measures; optional inspection and guidance lectures and workshops on specific issues of climate, drainage, geological and geomorphological structure of the area of practice; self-study of literature, museum collections of rocks, minerals, minerals in areas of practice; instructional classes on discipline, safety, fire and environmental protection, medicine; initialization and organization of meetings dealing with the student self-governance, administrative and economic measures to create the necessary conditions for work and rest of the practice team; acquisition of field equipment and materials.
The fieldwork was the only and the most important step of each practice. During the fieldwork the students performed various tasks in accordance with a particular type of practice, acquired practical knowledge and developed skills using the equipment and tools, learned to make descriptions and photographs of the researched items, synthesize the obtained materials.
At the final stage of the practice the students analyzed the collected facts and compared the results with those ones presented in the literature.
The venue was carefully selected: it was a limited area of various natural systems with an easy access to the river and the conditions for measuring the water flow velocity, width and depth of the channel; the area where one could fully observe, study and learn various geomorphological objects. The place meeting those requirements was Podillya Upland and southern part of the denudation of West Dnipro Upland (bank of the Pivdenniy Buh River near the village of Stavky, Bershad Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast). The following routes and territories were also researched: Murafski Tovtry, the Canyon of Murafa River (near the village of Busha, Yampolsky Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast), sand quarry, trails along the Pivdenniy Buh River, the quarry of Zavallia graphite plant (Gayvoron Raion, Kirovohrad Oblast), Buky Canyon (Mankivka Raion). These places ate truly unique regions. The students also made tours to hydro power stations to learn about the operation of the hydraulic structures (the Chernyatska and Gaivoron HPS). During the trip the future geographers deepened their knowledge of eolian and fluvial morphosculpture, relief activities of the ancient Galician (Sarmatian) Sea, researched and studied the sand pit as an anthropogenic form of relief.
The results of the students’ field practice were designed as a final team report - the main document containing comprehensive information about the work performed. The practice concluded with the report defense and receiving the credits on the geographic disciplines.
