Following the 93rd meeting of the commission chaired by Dr. Johann Fischer (Head of the ZESS at the University of Göttingen) held a multi-part workshop for the guests and members of the Scientific Commission (TU Dresden, Humboldt University Berlin, TH Cologne, Ruhr University Bochum, RWTH Aachen University, Universities Frankfurt/Oder , Gießen, Göttingen, Hamburg, Kassel, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Northwest University of Politics and Law X’ian/China).
Among other things, the 16 participants dealt with the role of language centers in the context of the increasing internationalization of universities and with the influence of AI on modern foreign language teaching. For this item on the program, the Digital Teaching Center of the TH conducted an “AI writing workshop for language teaching”, which met with great interest from all participants.
The President’s detailed words of welcome were particularly well received. Miss Dr. Helbig gave an amusing and entertaining account of how a UNIcert® language certificate in Italian paved the way for her own internationalization and later university management career.
The language certification system UNIcert® was created more than 30 years ago by the AKS, the working group of language centers, in order to standardize foreign language training at German universities according to common quality standards. UNIcert® now ensures the quality of training and testing of over 20 foreign languages at accredited universities in 6 European countries.
The Language Center of the TH Lübeck is aiming for UNIcert® accreditation for 2024 and is currently preparing the initial accreditation application.
The internal UNIcert® workshop takes place once a year at one of the universities from which the commission members come. The head of the language center at the THL, Nina Dethlefs, has been a member of the UNIcert® scientific committee since 2021 and has already been involved in several accreditation procedures for language centers in this capacity.