11/20/25

Vivian Harberts completes her doctorate on skills assessment procedures

In her dissertation, Vivian Harberts successfully took on the challenge of developing and testing a skills assessment procedure for semi-skilled and unskilled workers that is specifically designed for use in vocational schools. Using a design-based research approach tailored to her research project and a broad spectrum of methods, she succeeded in gaining a precise understanding of this field. The result of her work is a procedure that closes a central gap in the landscape of external testing. It is supplemented by feasibility analyses and implementation scenarios based on these.
Disputation Vivian Harberts

Disputation

On October 27, 2025, Vivian Harberts defended her dissertation and took the examination committee and other audience members on a journey through her many years of research and development, which began in 2017 with the ESF-funded project “KofeBS” (see link in the blue box). In a vivid presentation, she summarized the many facets of competence assessment and impressed the audience with her well-founded and precise answers in the lively discussion that followed.

The members of the examination board were: Prof. Dr. Falk Howe (University of Bremen), Dr. Claudia Fenzl (University of Bremen), Prof. Dr. Julia Gillen (Leibniz University Hannover), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Maren Petersen, Dr. Susanne Peters, Dr. Melanie Schall, and Dr. Kristina Kühn (all University of Bremen).

We warmly congratulate Vivian Harberts on her doctorate!

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