The present project (TALC_ME) addresses the employability of students from a number of disciplines in the humanities which are currently in high demand: the field of medieval studies, which links approaches from cultural studies and literary analysis. Because the subjects studied in this field – texts, images and written records from the European Middle Ages – seem to have no immediate implications for a future career at first sight, students of these subjects often feel ill-prepared for the requirements of the working world. Against this background, the applicants are convinced that with the suitable methodological training, students are already being prepared for the job market through the subjects and materials they study, especially with regard to the intercultural competences conveyed in these studies. The aim of TALC_ME is to provide students with methodological tools, to complement these tools with job-related and competence-oriented elements, and to translate all these skills these into an academic program. The output of such a program is 1. on the basis of a SWOT-analysis, to give students guidelines and recommendations aimed at providing them with intercultural and career-related competences for teaching in the humanities, using literary medieval studies as a case in point, 2. to develop a course curriculum for a European Joint Master Degree of 120 CP, which as best practice model can be adapted to related disciplines, 3. to create a module on „intercultural competence and career orientation“, which, as a best practice model which can be employed in multiple ways and which can be implemented in Bachelor, Master’s and PhD programs in the humanities, as well as 4. to provide an open-access platform supplying study and teaching materials and offering competence and career orientation to students of European humanities and cultural studies In order to put the teaching and study materials into practice, to evaluate them and to optimize their efficiency in a sustainable manner, there are, among other measures, three intense study programs bringing together students and faculty from ten different countries with partners from the working world. The group is convinced that this can only be accomplished within a European framework, since the development of students’ competences can be furthered in the exchange of European partners and, on the other hand, since particular synergy effects for qualifying students for the working world can be achieved by taking into account the specific experiences and practices models in the job markets of different European countries. All in all, the TALC_ME project unites thirteen different partners, ten universities from nine countries of the European Union as well as three non-academic partners (the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a major German newspaper; the Gutenberg Museum Mainz, the Institut Francais), which will channel their competences from the working world into the teaching modules which to be developed in the program. The project can benefit from experiences which have already been gained through the Erasmus-Mundus-Programms GLITEMA (which has been funded by the EU since 2010) and the European Master’s program GLEMA. Because of the high demand for suitable measures for preparing graduates from the humanities for the job market and providing them with adequate competences, TALC_ME is confident in the high efficiency of the measures and formats it develops. Their efficiency will be enhanced through a communication strategy which has specifically been developed for the program. Because the implementation of the newly developed teaching formats and curricula will already be implemented during the funding period, and because the best practice models, complemented from annotated accounts of key points and guidelines, will be published in a widely available brochure and through open-access, all these measures are geared towards sustainability.
The project (TALC_me) addresses the employability of students in the humanities, especially from those disciplines with historical approaches and cultural and literary studies. Because the subjects studied in this field seem to have no immediate implications for a future career at first sight, students of these subjects often feel ill-prepared for the requirements of the working world. Against this background, our Partnership is convinced that with the suitable methodological training, students are already being prepared for the job market through the subjects and materials they study. The aim of TALC_me was to provide students with methodological tools, to complement these tools with job-related and competence-oriented elements, and to translate all these skills into an academic program. This resulted in the development of manifold and diverse best-practice-models which aim at prompting others to follow their example in order to fill the European Higher Education Area with life and to enable students of the humanities to become active and productive members of a European civil society. The developed exemplary learning and teaching resources, study programmes, teaching concepts and study programme modules have been tested, assessed and optimized during three two-week intensive study programmes, in which students and lectures from ten different countries as well as experts from different professional fields were involved. The output is 1. a brochure based on different surveys and research, which provides guidelines for teaching career-oriented competencies in the humanities with a building set for designing career preparation modules; 2. a detailed and elaborated study programme for a European Joint Master Degree “Transnational German Studies” of 120 CP, with a focus on interdisciplinarity and the promotion of competencies and employability; during the programme, the students spend every semester at a different university in a different European country; the programme can be considered a best practice model that can be adapted to related disciplines; 3. three individual modules on ‚Promotion of Competencies and Employability‘, that were developed according to our guidelines and that are integrated in existing study programmes at three different universities in three countries; as best-practice-models, the modules can be adapted to related a wide range of study programmes in the field of humanities; 4. an open-access platform supplying teaching and study material on “Pre-national cultural studies in post-national Europe”; 5. the book publication of the closing event ‚Internationale Studiengänge in den Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften: Chancen, Perspektiven, Herausforderungen‘ / ‘International Degree Programmes in Humanities and Cultural Studies: Odds, Perspectives, Challenges’ with articles on the key future topics ‚International Classroom‘, Employability‘ and ‚Diversity of Languages‘. The development of innovative and future-oriented study and teaching concepts in the field of higher education must be seen in connection with international academia and an international professional world and should therefore be the result of a diverse international exchange. Therefore, the TALC_me project unites thirteen different partners, ten universities from nine countries of the European Union as well as three non-academic partners (the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a major German newspaper; the Gutenberg Museum Mainz, world museum of press and book art; the Institut Français Mainz), which channelled their competences from the working world into the teaching elements which were developed in the program. The project benefitted from experiences which had already been gained through the Erasmus-Mundus-Programme GLITEMA and the European Master’s programme GLEMA. Because of the high demand for suitable measures for preparing graduates from the humanities for the job market and providing them with adequate competences, TALC_me is confident in the high efficiency of the measures and formats it developed. All of the project results provide practical benefit and manageability and are permanently available: the newly developed teaching formats and curricula were already implemented during the funding period, the commented brochure, that provides principles and guidelines including a building-set as well as teaching and learning resources, has been made permanently available via open access in four languages, the guidelines and principles are also available in a printed version and the conference transcript was published by a renowned scientific publisher.