Dear students,
Your summer semester 2020 begins today, albeit without your physical presence in Leipzig.
Welcome to Leipzig University – online!
Prevention is our paramount aim in this time of the coronavirus pandemic. That is why student life at Leipzig University will be strictly virtual during the first weeks of this summer semester. The University management, the administration, the staff in the faculties and Central Institutions, and above all your lecturers, are doing everything they can to offer you a digital start to this semester. We hope to commence face-to-face teaching in just a few weeks, with the University Senate having set the provisional date of 4 May 2020. We are also working with political decision makers to ensure that the coronavirus pandemic will have as few adverse effects on you as possible. Examination periods will start later and may be extended into the autumn.
For the time being, e-learning formats – implemented with a great deal of imagination and creativity – are replacing face-to-face courses wherever possible. Lecturers have gone to great lengths to develop these new formats at short notice. Please, be patient if not everything runs smoothly from the beginning. We all care a great deal about good university teaching! And in any case, this will be an instructive semester for lecturers and students alike.
The prerequisite for you to be able to start the semester digitally this summer semester 2020 is the same as in any other semester: you need to have registered via AlmaWeb for the modules you want to take. Please then check your University emails regularly. Your lecturers will generally contact you by email with details of the online course’s format. Please also visit the websites of the University, your institute and faculty regularly to ensure that you do not miss any important information.
Roughly speaking, three scenarios are possible:
1. Lecturers distribute the teaching material by email/“Speicherwolke” and communication is also carried out by email.
2. The course content is posted on the University’s Moodle platform, where appropriate communication channels will also be set up.
3. In exceptional cases, teaching will take place in real time: you watch lectures while they are streamed live; seminars are held as video conferences using the relevant software recommended by Leipzig University (Jitsi or BigBlueButton), and you participate digitally.
Please be patient with your lecturers and understand that some things may not run smoothly. Get involved, give feedback, support each other. I am confident that we will get through this together.