Transfer activities in the area of teaching and study focus on the mutual exchange of experiences, knowledge, questions and ideas between students, researchers and non-university parties. The University of Konstanz was one of the first universities in Germany to systematically promote transfer in teaching, stipulating it as a profile-building measure in its Excellence Strategy concept. In transfer-oriented study and teaching projects, researchers, students and external partners jointly address issues from society, business and politics. This exchange can generate new ideas for applications or implementation.
Teaching, continuing education and career development, in turn, get impulses from the challenges that the economy, different professional fields and players outside the university are facing. Through transfer activities, the university can make an important contribution to fulfilling its social responsibility.
Principles of our transfer activities
- Transfer is a diverse and complex field of activity which requires creativity and flexibility.
- Transfer needs the courage to experiment and the freedom to possibly fail. Failure is seen as an opportunity to learn.
- Collaboration, service orientation and a focus on implementation are crucial for supporting successful transfer activities.
- Transfer needs trusting relationships between those involved. Mutual respect and consideration of each other's needs and priorities are essential for successful collaboration.
- Transfer aims to find and utilize synergies in the collaboration between everyone involved (students, researchers/teachers and external partners).
- Reflecting on the transfer process and the personal skills gained is a central learning component for students.
- Our university promotes the expansion of transfer activities in the area of study and teaching by providing staff who support the development of transparent transfer opportunities that are beneficial for everyone involved.
Transfer activities and support services
Even as they study, our students can gain transfer experience that connects study content and acquired skills with players and findings from the professional world and real-world applications. They are given the option of developing transfer skills that also include reflection on transfer processes.
Such transfer processes during the period of studies are supported by:
Teaching transfer skills
Creating suitable transfer opportunities enables students to acquire corresponding transfer skills. University teaching must allow students to try things out and make mistakes. In a first step, students in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes practise the translation of academic knowledge into non-academic contexts and requirements. Through internships or specific teaching formats, they learn to apply specialist knowledge, theories and methods from their study programmes to new questions and applications. This way students can develop transfer skills based on subject-specific knowledge, which in turn enables them to transfer knowledge to non-university contexts.
At the University of Konstanz, students can not only acquire subject-specific skills, but also develop general skills for transferring and applying their knowledge, which are known as interdisciplinary transfer skills. This includes concrete career preparation and orientation as well as entrepreneurial skills that help graduates entering the job market. Transferable skills not only promote professional success, but also contribute to active and responsible participation in society.
Creating transfer opportunities
For us, transfer opportunities and formats include the mutual exchange of knowledge and know-how between the university and non-academic players, for example, joint teaching projects with non-university parties, academic continuing education and career guidance.
Since 2017, new approaches have been systematically integrated in the context of transfer-oriented teaching at the university. If, for example, students in a seminar work together with local players and develop a plan for connecting the community to a municipal facility, this is a great opportunity for multidirectional transfer: Students contribute the knowledge they have acquired at the university and get practical experience as well as feedback from outside the university environment. The local players contribute their experience, specialist knowledge and know-how. In turn, they get new impetus as well as access to scientific discussions. A public exhibition in which students present content developed in a seminar to the public can be regarded as unidirectional transfer: University knowledge is made accessible to the general public.
In most cases, multidirectional transfer projects in teaching are closely connected to research. Teaching results from research, whereas research can also get impulses from teaching in such projects. In this way, transfer-in-teaching projects contribute to dynamic innovation cycles between research, teaching and the application of research results. Such transfer projects give students and teachers the option to revise or differentiate research questions as well as to pose entirely new questions in dialogue with external partners. Transfer-oriented teaching projects may also provide an opportunity for research and qualification theses.
Transfer in Teaching
Since 2017, the Transfer in Teaching team has promoted the expansion of transfer-oriented courses in all disciplines and in all stages of study, and thus significantly contributed to the further development of the university's teaching profile.
Transfer-in-teaching projects may arise from questions relevant to society, as well as from existing research projects or lecturers' research topics. However, new research questions can also develop from transfer-in-teaching projects. Due to the novelty of the questions in transfer projects in teaching, these are often research-oriented. Such teaching projects often generate topics for final theses or doctoral research.
The Transfer in Teaching team gladly supports teaching projects with external partners by providing advice, networking opportunities with potential collaboration partners, assistance with format development, guidance and co-financing. All of the groups involved may provide impetus for these teaching formats – teaching staff, students, university groups or partners from outside the university. Individual advice for both lecturers and external partners interested in project partnerships has proven to be the central instrument for initiating project seminars in the area of transfer.
Career guidance – Career Service
Most study programmes at the University of Konstanz do not prepare students for a specific career. This is why it is so important that students are able to recognize and name the skills they have acquired during their studies and transfer these to professional fields.
The Career Service team at the university supports students, doctoral researchers and graduates in transferring acquired skills to professional applications, in adapting theoretical knowledge to specific tasks as well as in reflecting on practical experiences and the knowledge gained.
Centre for Transferable Skills
The Centre for Transferable Skills at the University of Konstanz promotes transfer through a wide range of career-oriented courses. It responds to current educational discourse and social changes by teaching key digital and non-digital skills.
Courses include topics such as digitalization, democracy education and social issues, art and cultural management, sustainability. Workshops and seminars prepare students for daily study routines and everyday work, strengthen their personal and social skills and provide them with insights into various professional fields.
As bachelor's as well as master's students from any discipline can take part in the classes, the study groups are heterogeneous, thus promoting students' transfer skills. These skills enable them to reflect on knowledge and skills from different contexts and apply them in new situations.
Life-long learning: Academy of Advanced Studies
Teaching that results from research also includes continuing education that can be completed alongside daily work or that supplements existing qualifications. Transfer dimensions include:
- the complementarity of courses in the context of research transfer
- scientifically sound teaching of content and extension of methodological skills that postgraduates can complete alongside their job
- contribution to academic training in professional fields, for example in the field of therapy.
Courses at the University of Konstanz are all compatible with the Bologna requirements and are based on levels 6 and 7 of the German qualifications framework and the European Qualifications Framework. This corresponds to the bachelor's and master's levels at the university. The formats range from compact microcredentials to certificates of basic studies, certificates of advanced studies, as well as to bachelor's and master's degrees that can be completed alongside daily work. The university departments are responsible for the content of the study programmes as well as of the compact courses. This provides a consistent framework for the transfer dimensions of academic continuing education programmes.
TRAFO: network of transfer-oriented teaching in Baden-Württemberg
The TRAFO network for transfer-oriented teaching was initiated and funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg (MWK) for three years (2019-2022). Although the financial support has ended, the Transfer in Teaching team at the University of Konstanz continues to manage the project.
The aim of the network is to identify, make visible and support teaching projects in collaboration with non-university partners. The TRAFO team advises teaching staff and academic support services at Baden-Württemberg universities on establishing teaching transfer activities and promotes networking with other teaching staff and non-academic partners. This guidance is based on the understanding that good teaching should be designed together and that the exchange of ideas is just as important for the (further) development of teaching as it is for research.