WERT

WERT - Student perception of the workplace relevance and civic relevance in the humanities

WERT is a BMBF-funded research project in the field of academic success and dropout. One of the main factors for academic dropout is a lack of study motivation. At the same time, motivation can only be maintained, if students also attribute a certain value to their studies. 

The project assumes, that student's perception of workplace and civic relevance contributes to a higher study motivation and thus to a reduced probability of dropping out. Interventions that increase the workplace and civic relevance can thus help to reduce the number of dropouts.

However, the systematic examination of interventions and their effectiveness constitutes a blind spot in international research. To address this, the project WERT focuses on humanities students and investigates interventions that help them assess the value of their studies more highly. 

Because of that, the project’s main question is: What are the design features of interventions that lead to an increase in students’ perception of the workplace and civic relevance and thus to a lower dropout intention? 

To evaluate and identify interventions, we work with a wide range of cooperation partners, for example the career service of the university of Münster and the project ‘Engagementförderung durch universitäre Lehre’ at the university of Hamburg. Among other thing, a pre-post-follow-up control group design is used to analyze the effectiveness.