Practical Placement

The goal of the course is to teach students how to, on an individual level, autonomously approach the gathering of new knowledge in a manner uncharacteristic for a conventional study process. Students thus become acquainted with the methods which they will have to use in their future professional careers or during their further studies on the higher levels.
Students obtain knowledge through autonomous work carried out under the supervision of the assigned mentor within the school or company/organisation, namely through undertaking practical placement. Students use the professional and methodological knowledge obtained during their studies in practice and thus learns to solve practical problems in their professional field.
The knowledge obtained and the newly acquired competences shall contribute to the increase of the number of employment opportunities for the future graduates of the School of Humanities of the University of Nova Gorica. Moreover, organisations offering students practical placements thus gain a possibility to find and select their prospective human resources.
The competences acquired are:
- developing analytical thinking skills, which enable students to successfully study and solve actual problems in practice,
- the ability to individually solve professional problems by searching for the sources (including those in foreign languages) and using the research methods in the field of environmental studies,
- the ability to provide a critical evaluation of the results obtained,
- the ability to work in a team,
- the ability to work under supervision of a mentor,
- developing communication skills using professional language.

There are not enrolment or degree requirements for the course.

Students are placed in the selected organization (public, NGO, or private) in the wider field of cultural, service activities, administration, or research and development activities in the field of the study program, to complete a mandatory two-week practical training. The field of activity of the chosen organization and the type of work that the student experiences are related as much as possible to their study orientation (track, field, electives etc.). The course of training in the organization lasts roughly two weeks, and a total of 48 hours are realized in the organization under appropriate mentoring, divided into 4, 6 or less often even 8 working hours per day. In school the students get introduced to the organisations profiles, prepared for the practical work experience, and eventually they also report and reflect upon the experience as such, with peers.
Selection of the placement topic:
The school proposes a list of selected contemporary topics and the adjoining list of organizations, where students will study the topics during their practical placement. With the help of the school's coordinator for practical placements, who establishes links with organisations and manages the list of topics, each student selects a topic of practical placement (in special cases and upon prior agreement with the School, the student can select the topic and place of the practical placement on the basis of his/her own choice). The topic defines practical tasks and goals which are to be performed or achieved by the students during the period of their practical placement within a company/organisation. The topic is related to the students’ study field and reflects the interests of the organisation and should therefore be of practical value for the company/organisation.

The course is designed in a manner requiring the students to work autonomously under the supervision of a mentor within the school or organisation. Besides practical tasks, the course also requires students to search for and study various sources of literature related to the problem studied.

Knowledge and understanding:
After undertaking practical placement, students are able to:
- use their knowledge of the selected topic, acquired during their studies, in problem- solving in practice,
- analyse a problem in practice from a professional point of view and by performing practical tasks and using the theory to suggest appropriate solutions,
- find relevant literature sources in the Slovene and English languages (or other languages relevant fort he organisation or the work environment) and perform a critical selection of relevant information, as well as to establish links between pieces of information to contribute to finding a solution of the problem faced in practice,
- to work autonomously in the selected working environment for the whole period of the practical placement and thus gain appropriate work habits in their professional field,
- present the results or findings to their co- workers, mentor and others.

Due to the contemporary nature of the selected topics and the fact that the selected topics are linked to an actual study case of an ongoing practice problem within the selected organisation, the literature survey does not only consist of a review of a single textbook or scientific publication. It is rather based on data obtained from scientific and technical papers, internet releases, from reports etc., that is, through gathering and linking the information from various sources.

Descriptive grades »pass« and »fail« are used.

In addition to the formal coordinator of proactive education at the school, mentors from partner organizations with whom the faculty has an appropriate agreement are also involved in the implementation of the course, and who are also adequately informed and trained for mentoring tasks.

Franc Marušič is full professor of linguistics at the School of Humanities and the School of Graduate Studies of the University of Nova Gorica. His main field of research is syntax, and the bulk of his work has been on the syntax of Slovenian.

Selected articles:

• MARUŠIČ, Franc, ŽAUCER, Rok. O določnem ta v pogovorni slovenščini (z navezavo na določno obliko pridevnika). Slavistična revija. [Tiskana izd.], jan.-jun. 2007, letn. 55, št. 1/2, str. 223-247. http://www.srl.si/sql_pdf/SRL_2007_1-2_15.pdf. [COBISS.SI-ID 700923]
• MARUŠIČ, Franc. Some thoughts on phase extension to a single interface. Theor. linguist., 2007, vol. 33, no. 1, str. 83-91. [COBISS.SI-ID 637947]
• MARUŠIČ, Franc, ŽAUCER, Rok. On the intensional feel-like construction in Slovenian : a case of a phonologically null verb. Nat. lang. linguist. theory, vol. 24, no. 4, str. 1093-1159. [COBISS.SI-ID 589563]
• LARSON, Richard K., MARUŠIČ, Franc. On indefinite pronoun structures with APs : reply to Kishimoto. Linguist. inq., 2004, vol. 35, no. 2, str. 268-287. [COBISS.SI-ID 472315]
• Boban Arsenijević, Franc Marušič, and Jana Willer Gold. Experimenting with Highest Conjunct Agreement under Left Branch Extraction. V Teodora Radeva-Bork and Peter Kosta (eds.) Current Developments in Slavic Linguistics. Twenty Years After. Berlin: Peter Lang. (2020)
• Franc Marušič in Andrew Nevins. Distributed agreement in participial sandwiched configurations. V Peter W. Smith, Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann (eds.), Agree to Agree: Agreement in the Minimalist Programme, 179-198. Berlin: Language Science Press. (2020). DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3541753
• Franc Marušič, Petra Mišmaš in Rok Žaucer. Zakaj velika okrogla rdeča čestitka in ne rdeča velika okrogla čestitka? Poskus razlage nezaznamovane stave pridevnikov. Zbornik ob 80-letnici Ade Vidovič-Muhe, (2020).

Assoc. prof. dr. Ivana Zajc works in the fields of digital humanities, literary theory, narratology, literature didactics, and the history of emotions. She teaches at the School of Humanities, University of Nova Gorica, and is a researcher at the Research Centre for the Humanities at the same university.

1.) MIHURKO, Katja, ZAJC, Ivana, ILIN, Darko, MARINKOVIĆ, Mila. Analize omrežij v elektronski zbirki Pisma: vidik metapodatkov in semantičnih povezav besedišča. Primerjalna književnost. avg. 2024, letn. 47, št. 2, str. 31-44.
2.) ZAJC, Ivana. Analiza 90 slovenskih romanov in opusa Ivana Cankarja z računalniško stilometrijo. Primerjalna književnost. avg. 2024, letn. 47, št. 2, str. 113-126.
3.) ZAJC, Ivana. Becoming a woman writer: the self-representations in the letters of woman writers of the Slovene moderna. Literaturna misʺl. 2023, vol. 66, no. 2.
4.) ZAJC, Ivana. Scoring of essays in L1 in the secondary school-leaving exam. Pedagoška obzorja: časopis za didaktiko in metodiko. 2023, letn. 38, št. 1, str. 19-31.
5.) ZAJC, Ivana. Kaj je literarna zmožnost in kako jo preverjamo z maturitetnim esejem. V Novi Gorici: Založba Univerze, 2023.
6.) ZAJC, Ivana, PURG, Peter. Digitalna humanistika in literatura. Nova Gorica: Založba Univerze, 2023.
7.) ZAJC, Ivana. Stylometric analysis of 90 Slovenian novels and the works of Ivan Cankar. V: HABJAN, Jernej (ur.), MANDIĆ, Lucija (ur.), ZAJC, Ivana (ur.). Big data, small literatures : international conference : conference programme and book of abstracts : 3-4 November 2023, Ljubljana = Masovni podatki, male literature : mednarodna konferenca : program konference in zbornik povzetkov : 3.-4. november 2023, Ljubljana. Nova Gorica: Raziskovalni center za humanistiko Univerze v Novi Gorici: = Research Center for the Humanities at the University of Nova Gorica, 2023. Str. [7].
8.) ZAJC, Ivana. "Nucamo vsaj nekaj žensk, ki se zanimajo za poezijo" : samoreprezentacije avtoric iz obdobja moderne v pismih. V: MIHURKO, Katja (ur.), MLAČNIK, Primož (ur.), ZAJC, Ivana (ur.). Ljubim lepa pisma : dopisovanja avtoric slovenske moderne. V Novi Gorici: Založba Univerze, 2024. Str. 536-568.