The outcomes of educating foreign students at German universities falls behind stakeholder expectations. While foreign students are typically interested in staying in Germany to work, two-thirds do not succeed in securing full-time employment. This paper introduces the Employability Skills MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that aims at alleviating this problem by using a scalable online medium to enhance especially foreign learners' competencies needed for career success in Germany. The paper reviews the course concept and design, learner perceptions of the design, as well as the MOOC development project. The paper concludes by summarising lessons learned during the project emphasising modular course design, interactive exercises, practices to enhance teacher presence, and early course promotion via a variety of channels.
This paper investigates foreign postgraduate students' perceptions of learning and deploying employability skills through internships at German companies. It presents a mixed-method qualitative survey combining a student self-assessment questionnaire and in-depth interviews. A thematic analysis of data collected from nine participants results in the development of 18 themes related to learning and deploying employability skills. These themes provide a provisional resource for internship stakeholders -students, academic advisors and internship providers -for developing ways to enhance internship learning outcomes.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has impacted many industries such as the professional sports business. Almost all professional sports leagues, events, and championships have been either postponed or canceled. This chapter investigates the challenges of reduced revenue streams due to empty venues and canceled broadcasts on TV and on the internet. Also, the effects on the related merchandising business are addressed. Based on a theoretical analysis and an empirical study, the chapter highlights these direct impacts and sheds light on the indirect effects as well. As the pandemic disconnects sports enthusiasts to a certain extent from the team and/or athletes of their choice, certain behavioral aspects could appear. The results of the study underline that the financial effects in the short-term could almost be balanced; the medium- to long-term effects, however, will decrease the market value and threaten the business model of professional sports.
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