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The influence of interpersonal communications inside and outside a University on effectiveness of education is investigated. It is shown, that low effectiveness of direct (traditional) education may be compensated by increasing of communicational activeness of students and stimulation of interpersonal communications. Hysteresis dependence of quality of education on communication activeness of students takes place at low effectiveness of direct education. The fact allows explaining of modern situation in post-soviet countries, particularly, in Kazakhstan, when sufficient efforts of the government gives no evident results in respect to increasing of education quality.

Current educational research demonstrates the importance of equipping students to be active participants in their own learning. However, more work is needed to provide students with the metacognitive skills necessary to engage in Self-Regulated Learning (SRL). Feedback is a crucial component of the learning process and can be used by students to develop these skills but remains a source of dissatisfaction for students and educators. We contend that this is a result of a gap in students' understanding of the feedback process and the lack of dialogue between students and educators. This paper presents a methodology to conduct a feedback workshop as a means to improve the feedback experience while equipping students with the metacognitive skills needed to facilitate SRL. The methodology was evaluated in four workshops conducted with students from engineering and business at a university in the United Kingdom. In each workshop (excluding the pilot) students were requested to complete pre and post-workshop questionnaires and there was also opportunity for group discussion and reflection. Results demonstrate the potential benefits of such workshops in deepening the student understanding of the process and use of feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]