An olympiad in Biology as an evaluation tool of the educational process quality at a university

The paper discusses the importance of using extracurricular forms of education-Biology olympiads for the development of students’ creative potential, their professional development and quality improvement of the educational process. The tasks of the subject olympiad are grouped into three blocks depending on the degree of complexity, allowing to assess the level of intellectual capacity and creative thinking. The number of correctly completed tasks with a choice of one answer is more than 52%, it indicates the students’ ability to apply basic knowledge in the field of Biology for the solution of the standard problems. 86,06% of students are able to use critical thinking by performing tasks of increased complexity with a multiple choice of answers, to solve standard professional tasks in accordance with the algorithm. 56,74% of students have a high level of intellectual activity, creative approach for solving practice-oriented problems with a free answer. The tasks in the field of molecular Biology of cells, regardless of their type, caused students’ difficulties. A low average score is typical for practice-oriented tasks associated with the assessment of the organism response to environmental factors and patterns of several traits inheritance with different types of inheritance (0,72 and 0,39, respectively, with a maximum score of 5). The results of the olympiad indicate that the competence approach should be used in Biology teaching for education quality.