Veranstaltungs- und Klausurablauf Guide

Supporting suggestions and documents for teachers on how to conduct courses and examinations.

Foreword

Over the years, the Computer Science Subject Group Council has received feedback from students about courses where the examinations have sometimes gone well and sometimes less well. We have tried to summarise this feedback and the experiences of the Subject Group Council members in a general guide to conducting courses, which in our view shows an idealised process. The following is an idealised process for conducting courses, which in our view shows an idealised process. We have tried to summarise this feedback and the experiences of the subject council members in a general guide to conducting courses, which in our view shows an idealised process. The following is an idealised process for conducting courses, which in our view We have attempted to summarise this feedback and the experiences of the advisory board members in a general guide to conducting courses, which, in our view, presents an idealised process.

The following describes an idealised course process with a particular focus on examinations. The process is intended as inspiration for your own course planning, but also as a potential blueprint for new courses. These are suggestions. They are not binding. Document templates have been created for individual points (e.g. exam checklists), which are available in LaTex, odt and MSWord formats.

We are grateful to have received documents from several professors, which we have incorporated into the documents.

Event schedule in stages

The schedule of an event described in chronological order:

A few weeks before the event begins

• Check whether an event instance has been created in StudIP. (This should be done automatically by the QIS/HIS.)
• Publish the event schedule in the form of a StudIP announcement, including the date of the first event.

• Development of a bonus system for any tests conducted during the course of study.
• The examination regulations allow tests to be conducted during the semester. The aim here is to monitor learning progress during the course of study.
• These tests can be, for example, homework assignments or short oral or written examinations.
  • To motivate students, these tests can be included as a bonus in the actual examination performance.
• According to the 2017 examination regulations for Inf and TI, up to 25% of the total marks can be included in the examination mark, at the discretion of the examiner.
  • It must be specified whether the bonus contributes to passing the examination or whether it is purely a grade bonus.
  • It is important to inform students whether the exam score for a grade of 1.0 can be achieved without the bonus.
• Details regarding the certificates are regulated in the 2017 examination regulations (Inf & TI) in §6 (7).
• Regulations may differ for other degree programmes and must also be taken into account.

In the first week of the course

• StudIP announcement + additional announcement via slide in lecture and exercise presentation: Publication of the basic regulations for the course:
• If already known: Announcement of the provisional examination date (otherwise later, but as early as possible).
  • Rough announcement of the examination mode (duration, type, permitted aids)
• => This should enable students to prepare for the examination throughout the semester.
• Publication of the bonus regulation (see above).
• Announcement of submission deadlines for testatleistungen during the semester.

During the course

• Publication of important announcements via StudIP announcements and, if necessary, slides in lecture and exercise presentations. Important announcements include:
• Announcement of the provisional examination date (if not already done at the beginning of the course) or changes to the examination date or room as soon as these are available.
  • Cancellations and postponements of lectures and/or exercises (e.g. due to illness or public holidays); in the case of short-term cancellations, also use the option of sending a circular email as an announcement.
• Corrections of errors in documents during the semester should be clearly marked, explained and announced.
  • Upcoming deadlines for submissions
  • Inform students about their participation in the teaching evaluation and allow them time to complete it during the lecture (approx. 10 minutes). Discuss the results of the evaluation with the students afterwards.

A few weeks before the exam date

• Provision of materials for exam preparation (e.g. mock exams, formula collection, catalogue of tasks corresponding to the difficulty level of the exam).
• Offering an exam consultation hour or ‘question time’
• Plan and hold a revision session
  • The optimal time for this is approximately one to two weeks before the exam
  • Encourage students to collect questions that have come up during their exam preparation when announcing the session in advance.
  • Possible topics could include solving a sample exam together, calculating important types of tasks, etc.
  • If possible, offer the revision course as a recording, as it may overlap with exams and other events.
• Inform students of the 7-day deadline for deregistering from the exam.

A few days before the exam date

• Check the actual/more realistic number of participants for the exam based on the current registration figures 7 days before the exam.
• Determine specific room planning based on the number of participants surveyed
• Common models are: dividing participants based on the first letter of their surname or their matriculation number.
  • Assign at least two staff members per room to act as witnesses and supervisors (possibly more, depending on the number of examinees) -> Organise room planning and colleagues.

• Publish the specific exam procedure with room lists, admission times and the exam procedure in simple language.

  • It has been found that, unfortunately, language barriers often still exist, especially among foreign students, when it comes to understanding the rules for conducting examinations. This occasionally leads to mostly unintentional (alleged) attempts at cheating. To counteract this, a working group of the student council has drawn up a proposal for the advance publication of the examination procedure.

    TEMPLATE: Advance publication of examination rules:

    See document ‘klausurregeln_studierende’ in the download files at the top of the page.

  • Upload the document on the examination procedure as a file in StudIP.

• Increased attention to the event forum in order to respond to questions from students.
• Printing of examinations based on empirical values and the figures provided by the survey.
• [optional] Publication of the exam results and an overview of whether and what bonus points students have received. The StudIP result PIN plugin can be used to anonymise the list.
• Preparation of the ‘exam boxes’ per room with the following contents: See template "Checkliste_Klausurbox"

On the day of the examination

• If necessary, hold a preliminary discussion about the examination with the invigilators.
• Hand over the examination boxes and exchange telephone numbers if necessary (for communication across several rooms).
• If necessary, obtain transponders/keys from the porter.
• Ensure that, in the unlikely event that significantly more students than planned turn up for the exam, exam papers can be reprinted at short notice. (e.g. have staff on standby as backup).
• Conduct the exam using the exam templates.
  • These templates include, for example, health checks (last chance to leave the exam without failing), formalities for attendance checks, information on cheating, permitted aids, toilet regulations.
  • Template for exam supervision.
  • Template for announcements at the beginning of the exam.
  • A checklist for ‘exam boxes’
  • An exam tally sheet
• In general, ask colleagues about exam administration and best practices.

After the examination

• Announce the expected date on which the examination results will be available.
• Mark the examination.
• [optional] Calculate exam marks with bonus points achieved.

After completing the marking

• StudIP announcement: Announcement of the provisional exam results and the date for viewing the exam papers.
  • It has proven useful to upload the exam results (consisting of the grade, points achieved and any bonus points) in a PDF file in the file area of the StudIP event. Result PINs can be used to anonymise the results.

• Conducting the examination review and any correction of grades.
• Sending the final examination results to the Academic Examination Office (APA).
  • As long as grades are marked as provisional in QIS, changes can be made directly by the examiner.
  • If an improvement is made after the grades have been ‘finalised’ (e.g. due to a subsequent review of the exam), the APA can still make changes outside of the examination period. This requires communication from the examiner to the APA (an email is usually sufficient).
• Archiving of examinations (in accordance with the specifications of the institute or university).

Allgemeine Hinweise

Examination review

According to §22 of the PO, every examinee has the right to ‘inspect the examination files’; if any inconsistencies arise, an ‘appeal’ can be lodged in accordance with §23. In order to avoid overwhelming you as an examiner, the examination board and the examination office with a myriad of individual requests, access to examination papers should always be offered. Access to examination papers is ultimately an (informal) anticipation of such requests.

Access to examination papers should enable students to:

• Understand the assessment and recognise their own mistakes.
• Identify and clarify misunderstandings or errors in the correction.

It has proven to be very helpful to provide students with sample solutions for comparison during the review. Furthermore, as with file inspection pursuant to §22, students should be allowed to take handwritten notes (in pencil!). Photocopying of exams or sample solutions does not need to be permitted.

Depending on the situation, there are various modes available for conducting exam review:

• A fixed time slot => Students can review the exams on a first come, first served basis.
• Advance registration: Time slots are allocated in advance, and students can sign up for them. => This allows the load to be distributed.
• Option of online inspection
• If individual students are unable to attend the review (e.g. due to conflicts with other examinations), it is advisable to offer alternative or individual appointments to a reasonable extent. Ultimately, this also serves to avoid the significantly more time-consuming individual applications for all parties involved in accordance with Sections 22/23 of the Examination Regulations.

Submission deadlines

It is very helpful if submission deadlines for e.g. term papers or other assignments are communicated early on. The deadlines for submissions should be clearly and as precisely defined as possible: e.g. ‘The submission must be uploaded by 23:59 on 23 March 2024 at the latest via the following link.’

StudIP announcements

StudIP announcements are ideal for organisational messages relating to events. These can be created on the event overview page.

Newly created messages are displayed directly in participants' event overviews, making them an effective and reliable method of communicating information to students.

There are a few helpful settings you can configure for announcements. In addition to the title and announcement text, you can also specify the period during which an announcement is displayed. For example, announcements can be created in advance and published in several events at the same time. It is important to enter the expiry date for important announcements at the end of the exam period at the latest, so that they are visible throughout the entire semester.

StudIP message to all participants

The ‘Participants’ view of the StudIP event allows you to send a message to all participants of the event.

This message will be displayed to participants in StudIP under ‘Messages’ and ‘Notifications’, and a copy of the message will also be sent to the email address stored in StudIP.

This form of announcement is therefore well suited for forwarding important and/or time-sensitive information to participants. Ideally, you should only use it for these cases so that students are not inundated with emails and important messages are not ignored. Normal StudIP announcements should be used for information that is not time-sensitive.

StudIP Forum

The StudIP Forum is a great platform for participants to ask questions about the event.

Just a few days before the exam date, many questions about the content may arise, which should of course be answered as soon as possible. To ensure you don't miss any posts in the forum, you can subscribe to it. This means that when a new post is created by a student, you will receive a StudIP notification and an email to the email address stored in StudIP.

Result PIN

StudIP offers a plugin that can be used to generate randomly generated result PINs for each participant in the event. Teachers can export these pins in the form of a list and use them for the anonymous announcement of results.

Dies ist eine datenschutzkonforme Möglichkeit zur Veröffentlichung der Ergebnisse.

ILIAS

ILIAS offers the possibility to expand the range of courses on offer. For example, lecture-accompanying quizzes and tests can be created, enabling students to monitor their own progress during the semester.

Blubber

Blubber is a type of event-specific chat. Contributions cannot be sorted by topic and disappear after a certain amount of time. Therefore, Blubber is generally only suitable for non-critical information that does not need to be available in the long term. For anything else, announcements or the forum should be used.