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Profession-oriented Skills (Berufsfeldorientierte Kompetenzen, BOK)

Profession-oriented Skills (Berufsfeldorientierte Kompetenzen, BOK)

As a bachelor student at the Center for Key Qualifications (Zentrum für Schlüsselqualifikationen, ZfS), you attend modules based on professional practice during the lecture period and in the semester break.

The BOK section divides into five disciplines: management, communication, media, IT and foreign languages. It enables you to gain insight into potential occupational fields, to network, and to acquire additional qualifications with a personal profile.
In the BOK section, interdisciplinary key qualifications are conveyed by team- and problem-based as well as practice-oriented working. You have the chance to deal with your own skills and wishes, the labor market requirements, and other disciplines.
Thus, we recommend to ask yourself the following questions when choosing the BOK modules:

  • What are my professional wishes and goals?
  • Which additional qualifications and skills will help me achieve my goals?
  • Which occupational fields do I want to get to know?
  • In which fields do I want to enhance and deepen my strengths?
  • In which areas do I have to catch up?

From the BOK disciplines, you can usually choose what you are interested in and create your own individual profile. We are happy to give you advice on how to choose and put together your BOK courses wisely during our general office hours.

In addition to your specialized studies in your major and minor, you acquire practical experience and insights into professional fields and key qualifications.

What are the advantages?

In our modules:

  • you acquire additional qualifications that are of value for your studies and future professional life.
  • you learn the tools to realize your own projects through team-, practice- and problem-oriented work.
  • you come to grips with your own competencies, ideas and expectations,
    and you establish contact with potential future professional fields.
  • The current Center for Key Qualifications (ZfS) syllabus (BOK, Key Qualifications, Orientation Internships, Personal Skills Module) as PDF download.

Attention! The document displays the state at the date of publication! For current changes, please refer to the electronic course catalogue.

  • Do you have any suggestions concerning our work, proposals and ideas for our course program?
  • Your opinion is dear to our hearts! We are pleased to receive your feedback by .
  • Students can also contact their student representatives in the Quality Committee and ask them questions, give (improvement) suggestions, etc.

BOK Disciplines and Course Offer

This discipline places emphasis on management competence in the sense of the ability to manage yourself, others, or organizations in order to orient yourself towards goals and to assess their achievement. These skills are conveyed in courses such as e.g. Time and Self-management, Project Management, Individual Career Management, Principles of Leadership Practice, or Foundations of Business Administration.
Through the ZfS Management Modules, students also acquire a general understanding of management processes in enterprises and institutions and gain insight into comprehensive professional fields, such as e.g. marketing, corporate strategy, human resource development, cultural and scientific management.

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Numerous representative studies of the last years show that enterprises attach great importance to communication skills and the ability to deal with conflicts and to work in a team. In a study of the DIHK (Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce] in 2015, for example, enterprises refer to a lack of social and personal competencies of junior staff, i.a. Promoting these competencies is in the focus of the discipline Communication. In diverse courses, students can, i.a., improve their communication skills and their ability to work in a team, raise their awareness for intercultural contexts, or successfully conduct a presentation by using media purposefully.

Apart from the possibility to train argumentation, conflict resolution or conduct of negotiations, students can also find offers in the fields of scientific and creative writing.

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Being able to hit the ground in a world that is increasingly steeped in media is a fundamental skill and relevant to almost all professional fields. In practice-oriented courses, students learn the tools for the fields of film, radio, TV, internet, etc. They obtain an overview of the ways of working in these different professional fields and directly apply what they have learned into the projects.
In addition to technical and organizational skills, also cultural, economic, and ethical conditions are conveyed, so that students are able to analytically and critically deal with media and to promote their decision-making competence and their agency.

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Being adept in dealing with software applications is vital in the working world. The modules in the IT discipline convey theoretical and practical knowledge, enabling you to deal with software independently and competently.
A broad range of courses enables students, depending on their previous knowledge, to acquire basic knowledge, e.g. in the fields of word processing or spreadsheet or to acquire specific skills such as programming languages or pictorial design in modules on image processing or desktop publishing.

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In the face of increasing internationalization and globalization, foreign language skills are essential to being adept in the working world (and not only there).
Thus, students can learn foreign languages such as Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese from scratch or they can deepen their already acquired skills in advanced modules and in special modules such as Business English/French.

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