At a glance
For: students, teachers
Topics: Creating student-centered, flexible study options, future-oriented studying and teaching, helping to shape the scope and content of studies, orientation year as a micro degree, future-proof certificate programs, digital and individual learning support
Location: Justus Liebig University Giessen
Organize your studies and future flexibly
The Liberal Arts & Sciences project combines different levels of study offerings that have one thing in common: they represent more flexible study elements that respond particularly to the needs of students and the job market that is opening up to them, as well as social reality.
In times of social uncertainty and dynamic change, the ability to adapt and strategize becomes enormously relevant in order to maintain the attractiveness of the range of courses on offer and to enable graduates to be successful in their careers and society, as well as to provide impulses for sustainable social and scientific development. Therefore, all offerings in Liberal Arts & Sciences will be geared towards future topics. In order to meet the complexity of the challenge, at least two academic disciplines will work together on individual topics in the sense of an inter- to transdisciplinary course offering.
Well prepared for new future professional fields
The Justus Liebig University of Giessen (JLU) feels obliged to use the increasing heterogeneity of students' requirements, interests and skills as a resource in order to give them the opportunity to fully develop their potential and to be well equipped for new, future professional fields to be.
From JLU's perspective, this means that students, regardless of the subject they choose, can acquire a future-proof and career-oriented qualification in the so-called future skills, especially by offering additional qualifications. This is exactly where the project comes in. The inter-/transdisciplinary study program “Liberal Arts & Sciences” will enable degrees at different levels.
The first cohort (winter semester 2023/24) in the integrated bachelor's degree program will have the opportunity, as a pilot project, to help shape the further study and examination design in order to test, evaluate and consolidate a student-centered study model. At the first level, the range of courses on offer will offer the opportunity to acquire a bachelor's degree with a qualification aiming at future social issues. Part of the course of study is an orientation phase, which is used to choose the inter-/transdisciplinary focus and in which a micro degree with interdisciplinary skills such as understanding, interpreting, arguing and producing knowledge can be acquired.
Study success (…) can depend particularly on successful identification with the course offerings and intensive cohort cohesion as well as specific mentoring.
On a second level, students of other study programs will have the opportunity to acquire skills, at least partially integrated into their respective Liberal Arts & Sciences study programs, and of course also receive proof/certificate for these from JLU.
Surveys and experiences have shown that academic success, especially in degree programs with extensive options, can depend to a large extent on successful identification with the course offerings and intensive cohort cohesion as well as specific mentoring. As a result, a specific organizational unit will be located at JLU for individual, innovative support, advice and examination processing that takes into account the diversity of the group of students and will take the lead in the sense of a college for the entire range of courses. This can ensure that the subject-specific offerings in the Liberal Arts & Sciences degree program are coordinated and that a development towards transdisciplinary study offerings with appropriate advice and support can be initiated.
