May 25, 2018
It is made sure that mid-terms do not collide. Furthermore, the students are concerned that the exams will be made more difficult once a 0.25 bonus is given to students who participate in the Leistungselemente. The department will pay attention to this. It is important that it remains a bonus. In other words, even without counting the potential 0.25 bonus, the average grade should remain stable.
Prof. Hug is evaluating possible alternatives to programmable calculators in exams. Favoured solution: A list of three (or so) calculators which are allowed for all exams.
D-ITET wants to offer more courses in management and law, but that remains to be agreed on by D-MTEC.
The students propose the introduction of study centers. There, assistants from several subjects are available to answer the students' questions, during dedicated time frames. There is no opposition on the principle. The question boilds down to finding the right place in time frames.
Dec. 8, 2017
There are two persons who showed their interest: Prof. Ulrike Grossner and Prof. Jürgen Biela. The UK decided to ask all possible candidates for giving a test lecture.
Some statistics about the split of the Basisprüfung have been presented. It seems clear that due to splitting the second block has only “better” students, since some of the "worst" did no longer show up (since they failed the first part). This has to be communicated more clearly to the examiners: it seems the grading on the second block has been "tougher", i.e. eventualy leading to an equivalent number of students passing as in the previous years.
here are basically two options: a soft one (all students which are already in can stay and finish like in the old regime) and a hard one (all students are immediately switched to the new regime). Decision: Soft version with individual option to switch to the new regime for all “old regime” students.
Oct. 6, 2017
The results of the "Basisprüfung B" were rather disappointing. With this result the percentage of students that successfully passed both Basisexams was far the anticipated average of previous years. Possible explanations include that examiners in Basisprüfung B used a relative scoring and thus came with an overly harsh grading scheme. Another explanation lies in the math lectures itself. Chances are that the lectures content needs to be redefined. Further, an effort needs to be made to get a higher participation of the students on the Tutorials. A longer discussion on other possible reasons for the bad grades followed, with no clear and stringent result. Anyhow, the mathematics Professor agreed that this year’s grading required some corrections and the analysis grades of all students were increased by 0.25 points.
The "Unterrichtsbeurteilung" was discussed. The few professors that have received the worst evaluations have been or will be contacted by the Studiendirektor.
The new "Vertiefungsrichtung" (area of specialization) Signal processing and machine learning was approved.
The new "Weisung für die Anwendung von Leistungselementen in der Lehre" have been discussed. One of the main discussion points was the possible overrunning of other subjects by a single lecture demanding "Leistungselemente". There is no perfect solution for this issue.