A Study On The Reform Of Major Elective Courses In Vocational Colleges

Curriculum is an important bridge for cultivating talents. The rationality of curriculum design directly affects the quality of talents cultivation. As a type of education for cultivating professional and technical talents, higher vocational education owns particularity in the curriculum. In addition to professional courses, it is necessary to set up major elective courses reasonably. Major elective courses play highly important roles in the training of students’practical ability and innovation ability, development of the professional knowledge of students, cultivation of the personal skills and development of students’interest.The main purpose of this article is to find out the problems and reasons lied in major elective courses of higher vocational colleges, so as to propose suggestions on the reform of major elective courses. Firstly, based on the questionnaire, the interview and literature investigation, the present situation of major elective courses are analyzed. The results show that there exist weak points in the current elective professional institutions, e.g., the students are short of the understanding of the relationship between the professional elective classes and the public elective courses; neither do students get sufficient training from elective professional school; staff s elective course setting is mainly relied on the professional interest instead of accurate purpose and proper management from the side of the educational management departments. Secondly, after studying the basis of the curriculum goal, the current problems and solving strategies in vocational colleges’major elective course are analyzed in four aspects, i.e., purpose, content, implementation and evaluation. Actually, the absence of course purpose and vagueness on the specialized required course is destructive, which lead to the non-professional design of the curriculum content, either excessively freely or specialized. Meanwhile, the way that the course carried on is obsolete, and curriculum evaluation is absent. Finally, some advices of solving major elective course reform are proposed, corresponding from four aspects. We declare that elective courses are extension and supplement of major required course, and course content should be chosen as to be closely relevant with profession and industry. Furthermore, we prefer to take the teaching method of action oriented. In terms with evaluation, we address importance in student subjectivity, formative assessment and the combinatory evaluation methods.