Further advice on distance examinations

Dear lecturers,
In its meeting on 13.1.2021, the Senate unanimously stipulated in resolution 1/2021: "By the end of the winter semester on 31.03.2021, all courses and examinations will take place online" that all courses and examinations must take place online. You are certainly already in the middle of making preparations for the exams. For your support and to clarify some questions in this context, I would like to send you the following information and a request with this mail.

Notes on the distance examinations

As in the summer semester 2020, the legal regulations laid down by the Corona Mantle Act and the Corona Statutes of the University of Erfurt also apply in the winter semester 2020/21.

In order to be able to better estimate for how many students places are available for a supervised electronic examination in the room they have been allocated via the course catalogue, the Department 1 has prepared an overview: https://sulwww.uni-erfurt.de/PublicServices/RaumPlaene/RaumBelegung.aspx

For large lectures, it is advisable to ask the students directly in the moodle room of the lecture in which form they will write the distance exam, instead of triggering numerous mails (and having to read them ;-)). For this solution you will find a secure moodle query including instructions to import it into your moodle room at https://elearning.uni-erfurt.de/course/view.php?id=5299&section=16.

If students need a seat at the monitored computers in the URMZ PC pool for the exam, I would like to ask you to forward this reservation by e-mail to rz@uni-erfurt.de. Students cannot make individual reservations. This is the only way to ensure an orderly allocation of the available PC places.

Unlike in the summer semester, we would recommend that you use your Webex room for telephone contact when communicating with students in supervised exam mode. The telephone number valid for all rooms at the University of Erfurt is: +49-619-6781-9736. You must also inform the students in advance of the access code, which then refers to your personal room. You will find it in the pull-down menu under "Meeting Info" at the top of the application window when the meeting is active. This direct communication can be used to prevent misunderstandings about the absence of students in front of the computer during distance learning. Even if the connection is lost in the lockdown browser, the exam participants can contact the supervisor in this way.

Support for students with care responsibilities
In the second semester with massive burdens for students who have to provide special support or care for relatives in their families in addition to coping with the demands of their studies, I would like to ask you to accommodate these students as much as possible in the design of the examination situations. Although we succeed in continuing to provide the infrastructure for the preparation of written papers by opening the library, many students are unable to leave their home town and come to campus for various reasons. If affected students tell you about this and ask you, for example, for an extension of the deadline for submitting the work, please accommodate this request unbureaucratically and generously. In this way, you will help to ensure that even students with extraordinarily heavy workloads can manage their studies to some extent.

Information for students on how to use WISEflow
You will certainly be asked by students about problems with WISEflow. You can forward these students the following contact options of the Digital Teaching Taskforce:

•     the Moodle room: Uni Erfurt Digital Studieren
•     the Webex consultation hour on Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.: https://uni-erfurt.webex.com/meet/digital.studieren
•     especially for first-semester students, a question and answer session on 4.2.2021 from 4 to 5 p.m.: https://uni-erfurt.webex.com/uni-erfurt/onstage/g.php?MTID=e7ed824e76606b2ad3f9d6cd353d45a57 (Password: "Wiseflow")

Thank you very much for your cooperation and support.

Kind regards
Gerd Mannhaupt