The article deals with the planning of independent work of students in higher education, taking into account the competencebased approach. Independent work occupies a significant portion of time provided by the Federal state educational standards of higher education in the development of educational programs, but its organization and methods of assessment are not regulated. The article reflects the authors´ experience in designing tasks of independent work on the discipline of philosophy. The method of tasks development of independent work in accordance with evolving competencies, methods of their implementation within the classroom and extracurricular self-study, forms of assessment of their contribution to the formation of competencies are offered. Essential feature of the developed tasks of independent work, according to the authors, should be their production, which involves a subjective position of students in their implementation. Attention is drawn to the special role of various forms of self-evaluation in the development of ways to assess the tasks of independent work, allowing to determine not only the knowledge-but also communicative, and value components.