Structure of the Bachelor's programme
The year consists of four periods. Each period contains seven course weeks and one to five study weeks. For each course you will receive a number of course credits, EC (European Credits). 1 EC equals a study load of 28 hours. Throughout the entire programme, there is a strong link between theory and practice: you immediately translate the knowledge you acquire into communicative situations you might encounter in organisations practice. The Nijmegen programme emphasizes the use of language in organisations in a multilingual context.
In International Business Communication, you learn to communicate strategically in business, government, and non-profit organizations. You will delve into themes such as marketing communication, health communication, crisis communication, and social media. You will receive a solid academic education that includes developing academic writing skills, understanding existing research and ultimately performing your own research. You will improve your communicative skills in Dutch, but also in English.
General structure of the three academic years
In the first year, you will take introductory courses to get to know the entire scientific field of language and communication. You will gain broad theoretical knowledge of the interaction between language, communication, and culture in organisations. You immediately apply this knowledge to communicative situations from daily practice. In the second and third year, you build on the knowledge from the first year and delve deeper. In the final year, there is room to choose the subject in which you want to specialise further.
During the three-year bachelor's programme, you also learn how to design research, collect and analyse data. You learn about various qualitative (interviews, focus groups, interaction analysis) and quantitative (experiment, survey, corpus) research methods, so you will be able to choose the right method for an academic or professional research question. The theoretical, practical, and methodological knowledge you gain during the bachelor's programme culminates in writing the bachelor's thesis, which you complete in the third year.
Instruction modes
A form of lecture in which information is presented verbally by one or more lecturers.
Collecting (new) information in order to increase knowledge.
A form of a lecture in which the student works under supervision on learning assignments, usually in a group setting.
A group of people with a particular goal or task that they collectively try to achieve in a results-oriented way.