Transferable skills at the University of Göttingen

At the University of Göttingen, the teaching of transferable skills aims to enhance students’ academic skills and prepare them for professional life. It also supports their personal development and encourages them to take on responsibility within society.

Transferable skills form a compulsory part of all Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes and are integrated within the professional development component of the curriculum. Many doctoral programmes also include structured opportunities for students to develop these competencies.

Transferable skills provision at the University is multi-faceted and offered at three levels: through modules in the subject discipline or faculty, through the cross-faculty modules offered by many subject disciplines, and through transferable skills modules offered by central university institutions. As a result, integrated and additive transferable skills acquisition is possible not only as part of a student’s degree subject, but also across subjects and independently.

Transferable Skills division

The Transferable Skills division has formed part of the Academic Programme Development and Examination Regulations division of the Department for Academic Programme Development and Quality Management since August 2007 (Student and Academic Services since 2012). It collaborates regularly with the faculties, graduate schools, central university providers of transferable skills modules (ZESS, ZESG), the Student Information and Advisory Service and the Career Service.

Areas of activity:

Faculties

• Providing support and advice for the development and maintenance of degree-specifictransferable skills strategies based on the university-wide transferable skills strategy


• Providing support and advice for the further development of transferable skills modules specific to the degree or faculty


• Point of contact for feedback and suggestions from the faculties regarding the university-wide transferable skills modules

Cross-faculty transferable skills modules

• Updating the Digital module catalogue for cross-faculty transferable skills


• Pre-assessment of cross-faculty transferable skills modules for the Central Committee for Teaching and Learning, in collaboration with the faculties


• Further development and expansion of the range of cross-faculty transferable skills modules based on student, graduate and employer surveys and on feedback from faculties

Quality assurance

• Regular quantitative comparison between uptake and availability of transferable skills modules


• Review and analysis of course evaluations for transferable skills modules