the purpose of this work is the opportunity to share the experience of organizing swimming classes in order to activate the independent work of students and foster responsibility for the results of mastering the curriculum in the discipline “Physical Culture” at St. Petersburg State University.

The key to the success of higher education in the modern world is the formation of a creative personality of a specialist capable of self-development, self-education and innovation. And as practice has shown, the solution to this problem is hardly possible only by transferring knowledge in a ready-made form from a teacher to a student. It is necessary to transfer the student from a passive consumer of knowledge to an active creator of knowledge, who is able to realize the problem, analyze the ways to solve it and, having found the optimal way to achieve the result, follow it. In this regard, it should be recognized that the independent work of students (SRS) is not just an important form of organizing the educational process, it should become its basis.