gms | German Medical Science

Undergraduate research within study programs have gained considerable relevance in teaching Political Science in the past few years. Yet, most of these programs are optional and are implemented at the end of the curriculum in the last year of study. At Zeppelin University, scholars of Political Science and Public Administration are cooperating with other faculties to implemetn the Humboldtian ideal of higher education in combining research and study in an obligatory first year undergraduate research project called Zeppelin-Year and the Humboldt-Year in the final stage of study.

This paper aims to answer the questions on how fields of research by scholars can be combined with research project of undergraduate students of Political Science and Public Administration. Furthermore, there is a high effort to administrate the Humboldtian ideal of higher education between scholars and students. Therefore, the second question is how this ideal can be brought into a shape that is administrable and more importantly studyable. The final question covers the fact that students and scholars of Political Science and Public Administration are cooperating with the faculties of Communication & Cultural Science as well as Economics in an interdisciplinary approach to find solutions for academic problems. So, new interdisciplinary teaching and learning formats have to be established. To answer the questions above we will evaluate the research based learning formats Zeppelin-Year and Humboldt-Project by analyzing surveys of students, scholars and administrative staff from 2012 onwards.

Our finding show that while the Zeppelin Project isn’t evaluated that positive by the students and the academic staff. However the Humboldt Year has a much more positive reputation within the students. Therefore, our careful conclusion is that there is a learning process between the Zeppelin Project and the Humboldt Year as it was intended at the implementation of both modules into the study programs.

While the Zeppelin Project and the Humboldt Year was conceptualized for study programs in social sciences, we are convinced that this model is transferable to other study programs.