Scientific Club Meeting

8.5.2025

On May 8, the Department of Chemistry, Geography and Earth Sciences held a meeting of the Scientific Club “Innovative Technologies for Teaching Geography”.

Olha NIKITIUK, a graduate of the 2025 Master’s degree program in the specialty “Secondary Education (Geography)”, conducted a training on the topic “Solving open-ended tasks in geography lessons”. The speaker noted that in general there are two types of tasks: closed and open. Closed tasks have a clear condition. The condition contains everything that is needed to solve such a task, there is nothing superfluous. As a rule, there is one way to solve it and one correct answer. School education is built mainly on solving such tasks. In fact, these are not even tasks, but exercises to practice some intellectual skills, for example, the skills of applying formulas. But in life, such tasks practically do not exist! And those that do occur, the computer solves much faster than a person. Ms. Nikitiuk emphasized that life is full of open-ended tasks: with vague, vague, completely incomprehensible conditions, with the ability to apply different approaches to solving them. And the answer may be controversial, ambiguous, not unique: to build a new bridge, to make a machine tool, to cure a person and even to find a fiancé or bride – any of these tasks requires the ability to see and solve open-ended tasks. So, open-ended tasks are tasks that do not have a single correct solution. Open-ended tasks reflect the complexity of the real world, in which there are rarely simple answers.

The speaker invited those present to try to solve some open-ended tasks that she offers to students in geography lessons. The members of the group accepted this offer with pleasure. A large number of interesting, creative and even humorous ideas were expressed for solving each open-ended task proposed by the speaker. So, it turned out that open-ended tasks are interesting not only for children, but also for adults!

After the report, the participants actively participated in the discussion. It was noted that in order to be happy and successful, you need to be creative, and open-ended tasks are the most important tool for developing creative thinking. It was hoped that open-ended tasks would be used more often in the process of teaching geography. Thanks to this, the learning process would become more valuable and interesting for students.

The following statement by one of the participants best illustrates the impressions of the group members from the training: “The main disadvantage of open-ended tasks is that they end at some point…”.

Department of Chemistry, Geography and Earth Sciences