Professional Skills Certificate
The aim of the additional ‘Professional Skills Certificate’ degree programme is to prepare students for the global job market of the future and to sensitise them, even during their studies, to professional activities and contexts that may not yet exist or are difficult to plan and predict. Professional skills enable students to independently plan and make the necessary adjustments. Students can choose courses from six areas of competence and thus document and certify their personal development and level of knowledge: professional and methodological competence, communicative competence, social competence, self-competence, intercultural competence and digital competence.
By obtaining the Professional Skills Certificate, which students in bachelor's, master's and doctoral programmes can include in their application portfolio, students and employers receive proof that they have a high degree of self-organisation and decision-making skills to best meet the requirements of the world of work 4.0.
Qualification objectives
-
Recognising one's own skills and resources for personal profile development, their utilisation in the job market or as untapped potential for individual development.
-
Interdisciplinary cooperation in the course programme facilitates the recognition of interdisciplinary skills and promotes a confident, communicative demeanour among graduates.
-
Developing creativity, critical thinking, adaptability, initiative and participatory goal setting.
-
Knowledge of the most important communication models and concepts as well as specific communication techniques.
-
Acquisition of the ability to understand, respect, appreciate and productively use the cultural conditioning of perception, judgement, feeling and action in oneself and others.
-
Development of an interdisciplinary approach to problems in order to structure complex relationships with analytical thinking skills.
-
Reflective understanding of current and future professional trends and the ever-accelerating change in the labour market.
- Development of the ability to reflect, communicate convincingly and adapt this to new professional and social contexts.
The Professional Skills Certificate consists of 20 ECTS credits, which you can earn over a period of four semesters. 10 ECTS credits from the compulsory area and 10 ECTS credits from the elective area, from which you can choose two areas. This means that you must attend a total of four modules, each worth 5 ECTS credits. A module or area of competence consists of 3-6 courses, which you can choose yourself from our semester programme.
1. Two modules from the compulsory area (10 ECTS credits)
-
Communicative competence (5 ECTS credits)
-
Self-competence (5 ECTS credits)
2. Choice of two modules from the compulsory elective area (10 ECTS credits)
- Professional and methodological competence (5 ECTS credits)
- Intercultural competence (5 ECTS credits)
- Digital competence (5 ECTS credits)
- Social competence (5 ECTS credits)
3. Examination (certificate with a total of 20 ECTS)
The certificate programme can be started in either the summer or winter semester.
Applications for the winter semester 2025/26 can be submitted until 15 September 2025. If you are interested, please apply via jmu-psz@uni-wuerzburg.de
Applications for all other winter semesters must be submitted by 15 July, and applications for all summer semesters must be submitted by 15 January of the respective year.
Ten students will then be selected from the applications by lottery. Repeated applications are possible.
The module contains parts that train the ability to assign meaning to content in social interactions that serve to exchange information, thoughts, experiences, etc. within a current situation, and to draw conclusions for successful communication. The ability to correctly interpret non-verbal signals such as body language, facial expressions and gestures also plays an important role here. The module trains a whole range of skills and competencies, each of which is used simultaneously and in varying degrees depending on the situation and context. A prerequisite for the willingness and ability to understand and shape communicative situations is knowledge of important communication models and concepts as well as specific communication techniques.
The module contains parts of the course that train the development of self-competence as a lifelong process. It trains the willingness and ability to clarify, think through and assess development opportunities, requirements and limitations as an individual personality, while developing one's own talents and making and developing life plans. Self-competence encompasses qualities such as independence, critical thinking, self-confidence, reliability, responsibility and a sense of duty. In particular, it also includes the development of well-considered values (e.g. regarding family, career and society) and a self-determined commitment to values.
The module includes course components that train students' willingness and ability to use their specialist knowledge and skills to solve tasks and problems in a goal-oriented, appropriate, methodical and independent manner, to evaluate the results, and to proceed in a goal-oriented and systematic manner when working on tasks and problems.
The module contains parts of the course that train a person's reflexive behaviour in relation to their environment. Students learn to live in social relationships, exchange information, recognise and understand affection and tension, deal with others rationally and responsibly, and build and maintain social relationships.
The module contains parts that sharpen our understanding of the thought and behaviour patterns of our counterparts, raising awareness of our own culture and the differences between it and other cultures, in order to communicate successfully. Intercultural competence is demonstrated in the ability to understand, respect, appreciate and productively utilise the cultural conditioning of perception, judgement, feelings and actions in oneself and others.
