Students can have competences acquired outside the university credited towards their studies. Staff from PLAR Services and the University's Examinations Office are on hand to support them.
Whether a doctor, astrophysicist or special needs teacher - the path from school does not always lead directly to university. "However, students with professional experience in particular often bring skills with them that others only acquire at university," says Anja Eilers-Schoof, a member of the PLAR Service team who advises students. Since the beginning of last year, the university's service has offered students a regulated procedure for having these skills recognised. After all, 26 per cent of all students at the university already have vocational training or other professional experience.
The counselling service is part of the PLARnet project, in which the Centre for Lifelong Learning (C3L), School I's Competence Centre for Credit Transfer, the Examinations Office in Division 3 and the Department for Study Affairs are cooperating. It is the first central institution in Germany to bundle counselling and support services in credit transfer matters at a university. "We are thus making an important contribution to further opening up universities to people with professional experience," says Dr Wolfgang Müskens, research associate in the area of credit transfer.
Informally and formally acquired competences count
The concept for PLAR ("Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition") originally comes from the Anglo-American world. The special thing about it is that students do not have to prove qualifications - such as a specific certificate - for a study module. "We are more interested in competences that students may have acquired formally in their academic appointments or training and also informally, for example in voluntary work," explains Eilers-Schoof. According to a decision by the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, students can have up to 50% of their credits recognised in this way.
So far, more than 150 students seeking advice have contacted the PLAR team. The first step for students is an initial consultation lasting a good quarter of an hour. Interested parties can book an appointment for this via Stud-IP. Together with Antje Beckmann from the Examinations Office, Eilers-Schoof and her colleagues then clarify whether the students fulfil the necessary requirements to have competences acquired outside of the university recognised. This is because if they bring university credits from a previous degree programme, for example, which can be transferred to the new degree programme, these take precedence over skills acquired outside the university. Cooperation with the Examinations Office ensures that these and other aspects of examination law can be clarified right at the start of the consultation, emphasises Eilers-Schoof.
Proving competences at university level
Students then have to decide which modules of their degree programme they want to replace with previously acquired skills. They can find the exact requirements in the module descriptions. This is an important step, "because academic appointments and degree programmes don't always go together," says Müskens. In one or more intensive counselling sessions, the PLAR staff help students to find out exactly what this is - and to find the relevant evidence for the competences. "Like archaeologists, we dig for evidence in the students' biographies," says Müskens, explaining the work.
At the end of the process is a portfolio - a comprehensive folder. In addition to a CV, certificates and a justification for the proposal, this contains a synopsis that lists exactly which competences the students have and how they can prove them. This is a lot of work, says Eilers-Schoof. "But after all, the applicants are supposed to demonstrate competences at university level." The counselling work has also shown the PLAR employee how important it is for students to look at their own experience as part of the portfolio: "They see what they can actually do and what value this represents for the university."
Most of the proposals successful
The students have already created a good 50 skills portfolios in this way. More are in the pipeline. The advantage: the competences acquired outside of the university are documented very specifically and meticulously. The subject representatives of the School who ultimately assess the portfolio can thus easily understand whether they accept the complete proposal for credit transfer or only parts of it - or reject it. At the end of the process, it is once again the Examinations Office that sends the decision to the applicants.
Eilers-Schoof and Müskens are satisfied with their consultations so far: After all, the majority of the credit transfers actually applied for have been successful so far. The work is also fun, says Müskens: "We get very deep insights into academic appointments that we would otherwise know very little about."
The weekly office hours take place on Thursdays between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the Student Service Centre (SSC, Haarentor campus, Building A 12, Room 2-214). Registration takes place via Stud-IP.
