ON INVOLVING STUDENTS IN INVENTIVE WORK

V. A. SUVORIN

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The results of the All-Union Meeting of Students, held in Moscow in October 1971, showed that one of the important features of the modern educational process in higher education is its combination with the scientific process. Student participation in research work has acquired a mass character. As the Minister of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the USSR, Comrade V. P. Elyutin, noted in his report, 600 thousand students, or every fourth full-time student, are actively participating in research work and design developments at the country’s higher educational institutions. The task of higher education at the present stage is to improve the forms of student participation in the scientific process. Of great importance in this respect is the mass involvement of students in inventive work. This measure serves not only the goal of improving the quality of training future specialists, but is also aimed at solving the task—set forth in the Directives of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU—of increasing the stimulating role of patent affairs and patent information.

In a higher educational institution, as an organization combining the educational process with the scientific one, the tasks of improving the quality of specialist training, improving the quality of research work, and perfecting inventive and patent-licensing work are closely interconnected and must be solved within a single framework. The connection among these tasks is manifested in the fact that the improvement of inventive and patent-licensing work contributes to improving the quality of research work with respect to its level of novelty, patentability, patent purity, and the competitiveness of technical solutions that are the result of research work. At the same time, student participation in carrying out work whose final results are subject to high requirements has a beneficial effect on improving the quality of their knowledge and has important educational significance.

An indispensable condition that creates the possibility of involving students in inventive work is the organization of the scientific process in such a way that it provides for the creative participation of students in it. Work performed by students is classified, according to the nature of the labor contributed, into two categories:

1) work consisting in the provision of technical assistance;
2) work of a creative nature.

The first category includes:

a) carrying out theoretical and applied calculations according to known laws and regulations, using known methods or those provided by the supervisor;

b) preparing drawings of known or new equipment according to a detailed technical assignment presented by the supervisor;

c) developing experimental equipment according to a detailed description and detailed diagram provided by the supervisor, installing it, and mastering its operation;

d) mastering known methods of analysis;

e) conducting experiments and processing experimental data according to a program specified by the supervisor;

f) searching for sources of scientific and technical information and preparing abstracts separately for each source (without generalizations or conclusions).

The second category includes work in which students independently solve fundamental scientific and technical problems and which contains elements of creative scientific thinking. As Professor V. G. Kirillov-Ugryumov, chairman of the Moscow City Council for students’ scientific work, rightly noted,^1 involving students in such work is the main task at the present stage.

Creative work includes:

a) independent development of calculation methods and the carrying out of theoretical and applied calculations using them;

b) designing devices and technological lines;

c) developing the methodology and program of an experiment;

d) developing new methods of analysis or applying known methods to new objects;

e) processing experimental data with analysis, generalizations, and presentation of conclusions;

f) preparing an abstract containing generalizations, analysis, and conclusions based on the materials of the scientific, technical, and patent information studied.

Both categories of work may be assigned regardless of the form of students’ participation in the scientific process: whether conducting research according to the curriculum, on an individual assignment, in the course of completing a term paper or diploma project, according to the plan of a student design bureau or scientific circle, or while carrying out production assignments in the event that a student is enrolled among the personnel carrying out paid research work. It is important that a differentiated approach be taken to the distribution of assignments among students. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is advisable to assign junior students work that has the character of providing technical assistance. The skills acquired by students in such work are useful, and this stage cannot be skipped.

As for senior students, taking into account that they have for the most part studied the general educational disciplines and some of the specialized ones, it is necessary—

^1 Collection of instructional materials on the organization of students’ scientific and educational-research work. Moscow, 1970, p. 7.

it is permissible to set assignments in such a way that carrying them out requires creative scientific thinking. It is important, in this connection, to interest students in the given research topic. All this is entirely in the hands of the scientific adviser, who must tell students about the current state of the narrow branch of science and technology under consideration, point out its shortcomings, and put forward ideas concerning the solution of certain problems. These must be precisely ideas, and not proposals already prepared for practical implementation. The latter cannot arouse lively interest among students and will be carried out only out of necessity.

Thus, we have come to the main point: the basis for involving students in inventive work is the presentation to them by the scientific adviser of ideas that must be taken up by the students, supplemented, developed, brought to a state of readiness for practical implementation, and implemented. In such a process there is a broad field of activity for inventive thought. The possibility is not excluded that the idea may be proposed and implemented by the student himself; practice, however, shows that in most cases students do not act as “generators of ideas,” but, having received a direction of work on the basis of ideas, themselves express original thoughts that develop the ideas and successfully solve the theoretical and technical problems that arise in the course of scientific work and require creative thinking.

Students’ proposals in the course of the work are corrected, refined, and brought by the scientific adviser into mutual agreement. Such a situation in scientific cooperation is a quite sufficient condition for recognizing students as coauthors of a scientific work and, in particular, as coauthors of an invention. However, there are special features in establishing coauthorship of an invention. One of the necessary conditions for recognizing a particular person as a coauthor of an invention is his solution of a definite technical problem or part of one. Specifically a technical problem, since solutions of purely theoretical problems and other proposals of a nontechnical character are not elements of inventive creativity. In this connection it becomes still more urgent to take account of students’ individual inclinations when assigning tasks for theoretical and applied research. Another condition is the execution of the technical solution at the level of world novelty. This prompts students to conduct studies of their proposals for novelty, using scientific and technical—and, what is especially important, patent—literature available in the institute’s collection, in city libraries, and obtained by order from territorial patent collections. As a result, they acquire in-depth knowledge of the given branch of technology both within the USSR and in foreign countries. In addition, a proposal, in order to be recognized as an invention, must be progressive and must yield a definite positive effect. Most often the positive effect can be presented as planned savings from the introduction of the proposal. Such economic calculations, apart from their cognitive significance, have important educational value. In foreign patenting of an invention, students may also be involved in carrying out market studies. The general condition for including a person among the coauthors is his creation of a technical solution that has been reflected in the formula of the invention, in its main or additional claims.

The stimulating factors in attracting students to inventive work are:

1) an inventor’s certificate for an invention is considered a scholarly work;

2) obtaining an inventor’s certificate does not preclude the possibility of publishing an article in a scientific journal;

3) when an inventor’s certificate is obtained in the name of the higher educational institution, students have the right to a one-time incentive remuneration;

4) when an invention is introduced into the national economy, the right arises to receive remuneration calculated depending on the savings obtained;

5) when a license for an invention is sold, the right arises to receive remuneration calculated depending on the value of the license;

6) an inventor’s certificate gives the right to preferential filling of vacant positions in higher educational institutions and research organizations, and to benefits in obtaining academic degrees and titles.

The factors listed follow from the inventive law of the USSR. There are also other possibilities for stimulating students’ inventive creativity in a higher educational institution. These include holding competitions for the best student invention, for the best student-inventor, involving students in the All-Union Society of Inventors and Rationalizers (VOIR), and others. It is desirable to time the holding of competitions to coincide with the defense of diploma projects (works), and they should be organized in such a way that, by the time of the defense, it is possible to draw conclusions about the student’s inventive activity. Criteria of inventive activity may include the number of applications for inventions, the existence of positive decisions by the Committee on the issuance of inventor’s certificates, inventor’s certificates, the degree of novelty and complexity of the invention, the expected economic or other positive effect from the introduction of the invention, the expediency of patenting it abroad, and the share of creative labor contributed by the student in creating the invention. An important stimulating factor is the raising of the patent culture of scientific workers and the improvement of inventive work in the higher educational institution as a whole, as well as the inclusion of the course “Patent Studies” in the curriculum. This, in particular, is evidenced by the experience of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. Until 1968, when the course in patent studies was not taught and the general inventive activity in the institute was low, applications for inventions with student participation were submitted very rarely: no more than one or two per year. In 1969–1971 their number grew to 10–20.

The use of the above-mentioned stimulating factors will be an effective measure aimed at involving students in creative participation in research work, in experimental design developments, in carrying them out at the level of inventions, in the study of patent information, and, on the whole, will have a beneficial effect on the educational and instructional process.