The Vocational and Business Education team is looking forward to the new semester and the exchange with interested students and has planned two highlights in the summer semester 2024 as part of the Campus Festival and Democracy Week, in addition to a diverse and interesting range of courses. 

Prof. Dr. Michael Goller's lecture entitled "Shaping and developing institutions of (vocational) education" started last week. His seminar of the same name will begin this week. The accompanying seminar to the lecture "School development in the focus of good healthy schools" led by Ms Katrin Arianta and the accompanying seminar entitled "Digitalization in school, everyday life and work: possibilities and consequences for the work of teachers" by Ms Alina Gierosz also began last week. 

The department also offers other courses with various focal points. Last week, the seminar "Digitalization and technologization in the context of school development" by Ms Verena Pfeiffer began. This week, Ms. Alina Gierosz's course on "Visual perception and attention of teachers: A seminar on findings from the world of eye-tracking" will start. Prof. Dr. Goller is also offering two seminars to deepen content-related and methodological skills. The seminar titles are "Educational Science Odyssey: Navigating Seminal Research of the Last Decades" (in English) and "Empirical Research in the Master's Thesis and Beyond: From the Initial Idea to Your Own Research Project", which started this week. The range of courses offered by the department will be supplemented by the block seminar "Vocational orientation as a task of schools from primary school to vocational training" by Ms. Katrin Arianta, starting in August.

This year, IBB will present itself to prospective students, students and guests at the Campus Festival on May 23, 2024, in order to present vocational education at the University of Kassel in an exciting and realistic way. Exciting insights into didactic concepts using the example of "gamification" await those interested. Therefore, the central questions of work, school and vocational education will be addressed in a game-based manner in order to create innovative, colorful and diverse (future) visions of school, study and work in an informal atmosphere. In addition, the IBB team will be on hand to provide competent and experience-based advice on studying and to clarify any unanswered questions. 

Vocational and Business Education will also be taking part in the core study program's Democracy Week from May 21 to 24, 2024. A constructive attitude towards democracy is important for the continued existence of our society. Democratic participation must therefore be understood and learned. Realizing this challenge is one of the tasks of the education system and the university. Political participation must therefore be made a topic in university teaching, its numerous theoretical aspects discussed and critically scrutinized as a social power and institutional practice. The theme week therefore aims to liberate democracy from its supposed normality and to emphasize its importance in the everyday life of students and their later role as teachers and educators. In this context, Prof. Goller will offer a lecture unit on "Promoting democracy as a task of school development", Ms. Pfeiffer a seminar session on "Digital divide: meaning in the context of media literacy, fake news and more" and Ms. Gierosz a seminar session on "Democracy in the digital age - potentials and risks of artificial intelligence for political participation" as part of Democracy Week.

Another new feature at IBB is learning and educational coaching, which is open to all students. It provides individual and effective support for overcoming problems or crises during studies. The coaching can cover topics such as 

• Learning more effectively
• Optimizing exam preparation
• Improving time management
• Overcoming low motivation
• Making career decisions  

Interested parties can contact Dr. Juliane Dieterich(dieterich[at]uni-kassel[dot]de) to arrange coaching appointments.