The German Career Service `Studierende & Arbeitswelt (S&A)´ focus Technology guidance at Career Service work - The transfer of the concept of Blended Learning to the Career Service work

Abstract

As a result of increasing competition caused by globalization in the working world, there is a need of high quality support in the university offers. The high quality mentoring during the academic periods should be accompanied by the progressive and concurrent attendance of the Career Service (CS) work. Comprehensive analysis of the CS offers in Germany, showed that the main concept of CS work consists of four basic elements: information, consultation, career qualification and partnership management. All these issues are covered and intensified by a special CS Concept “Studierende & Arbeitswelt” (S&A) from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Cologne. Since 1989, S&A has been offering the opportunity to supplement studies with career orientation and practical training that significantly increase the students chances at the job market. The program is limited to twenty students, so the focus on new steps into technology guidance is important to rise up the number of participants. The variety of CS in Germany is mainly covered by “present” approach, like “face to face” consulting or courses for career qualification including recruiting management. For a lot of CS organisations the aspect of partnership management is limited to notices, individual work-consultation and job exchange with non-specific study field offers. In addition, the number of participants on career courses has to be limited due to the requirement of CS to offer a high quality support. This causes a neglect of the high participation need on the part of the students and leads to a deficient coverage of service requirements. The qualifications and information offers of the CS are targeted prevalently on the internal high education level. The embedding of the job market as well as the national and international high education offers usually does not take place. Considering these problems and high requirements of CS work, web-based offers could give a chance to provide high quality and multidisciplinary services to a big variety of students. The electronic CS could assure a flexible and common access to the support and placement for students of all study fields, employers and university stuff members. In Germany the development of methodology and didactic concepts extending CS work to an electronic platform is in an early stadium. By reason of the virtual interest and the advantages of an electronic platform, various universities in Germany have E-Learning modules and web-based national and international job exchange by now. The global development of an electronic platform for CS could give the opportunity for national and international partnerships in the fields of internships, work quotes and thesis topics, as well as cooperation between employers and universities