Teaching/learning quality in the business study courses
BMBF, Federal program, 563.000€ (subproject) out of 5.6mio€ (overall university project) 10/2012 – 09/2020
Since 2012 the University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal has been part of the federal government and state program “Teaching Quality Pact”. The project _____- Quality in the area of tension of didactic competence and modularisation as the result of the Bologna-Process, is already in the second promotion phase. As a subproject of the mentioned QPL-project the department for economy is doing accompanying researches for a further development of the curricula. The focus is on the following topics:
- Internationalisation
- International Internships, Social Credits and the introduction of Service Learning
- Quality of teaching and teaching in blocs
1. Internationalization
As part of the support of intercultural skills among students, the project is focused on the increased international orientation of the business administration curriculum. Therefore, a concept for an international semester with English-language lectures and international guests has been developed. The concept will be evaluated and refined after its first implementation. Furthermore, the cross-teaching project (link to crossteaching.org) is going to research hybrid learning concepts which will promote and develop the digital and social competence of participating students.
2. International Internships, Social Credits and the introduction of Service Learning
A comprehensive quality analysis of international internships enables their further development in order to emphasize the benefit of going abroad for students. Due to the improvement of content-related and scientific transfers of the internships, the practical qualification of the students as well as the contextual networking with companies that offer internships, will be optimised continuative. The development and introduction of a Social Credit model conduces to the expansion and support of the student’s soft skills. The personality development of the students is paramount to this model. Furthermore, a new teaching and learning method (Wikipedia Link) is introduced within the Service Learning. Due to the implementation of the studies expertise in an extracurricular context in cooperation with project partners from social sectors, not only soft skills will be trained but also know-how will be well consolidated by transferring it to sectors outside the subject area.
3. Quality of teaching and bloc-teaching
The actual workload of students in various business administration studies is surveyed for an analysis of the study program with focus on the practicability. The surveys take place over a longer period, usually an entire semester long. For this all study-related activities are relevant as well as the calculation of the actual workload and potentially the additional circumstances of time spent on occupational activities for study financing. The results are used for the improvement of the student’s ability to study, for the balance of peak loads and the optimisation of teaching and learning methods and didactics. Simultaneously it is an aim to improve the quality of practical-oriented and research-based teaching.
