An entire degree course online for one semester. Is that possible? It is possible! The credits go to our students, and not just in the form of ECTS!
The Integrated Management Systems/Integrated Management course at Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences is practice-oriented right from the start. Professor Brauweiler's Master's course focuses on projects, teamwork and cooperation with local and international partners.
The project management module is planned for the summer semester 2020. Lectures will be held using the flipped classroom model for the first time this semester and the practical part will take place in small groups of 4-5 students working in teams. In cooperation with the city of Zittau, represented by Kai Grebasch, the students will develop concepts to make the city's events, from the weekly market to the Christmas market, more sustainable. The kick-off event with the project partner will take place in person during a team building session at St. Marienthal Monastery and everyone involved is looking forward to a productive and intensive collaboration. As soon as everyone returned home on Friday afternoon, it became clear that face-to-face teaching would be discontinued due to the coronavirus situation and that personal contact between students, lecturers and the project partner was history.
And now? Of course, changeover. Everything online from now on. But how? People are emailing, chatting and making phone calls at lightning speed. The big questions are always "can we find a way to convey the theoretical input as a basis for the project application?", "can the objectives of the module be implemented?" and "will our students be able to cope with the workload?" The answer: Yes, we can. How? With committed students who don't think about giving up on their project for a minute. They all have the goal of making a contribution to the development of the city in which they are studying and ensuring their academic success. At the end of the semester, they all want to not only pass the module, but also complete the TÜV course in project management and hand over their project idea to Mr. Grebasch so that the city of Zittau can continue to work with it in the future.
As before, the documents for the module are made available online. Questions on theory and project processing are clarified via online conferences. The work status is presented to the project partner in online meetings and open questions are discussed. Everything runs as planned, except that the participants gather in front of their computers armed with headsets and coffee, solve technical problems on the side and are sometimes well or less well groomed in the course of the semester.
The city of Zittau is presented with three mature concepts: they focus on avoiding plastic waste by replacing the so-called shirt bags with reusable nets and boxes as well as the use of reusable cold and hot drinking vessels including their own cleaning option. In July, the students will acquire their certificate as project managers in cooperation with TÜV-Rheinland Akademie GmbH and the Center for Knowledge Transfer and Education.
Incidentally, the whole thing works just as well with fictitious projects, as demonstrated by the students of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, who are also working on complex project tasks exclusively online and very diligently this semester. We are supported by Hartmut Paetzold, who is teaching the MSProject software virtually for the first time, and other hard-working colleagues such as Ulrike Bobek and Johannes Schaumlöffel, who are buffering the significantly increasing need for consultation. The credits go to our students, and not just in the form of ECTS.
The incredible thing is that all modules on the "Integrated Management Systems"/"Integrated Management" courses have been running online according to the timetable since mid-March. The tools vary depending on the lecturer: Skype, BigBlueButton, Jitsi, youtube channel, Zoom, Opal - it's all in the mix here. If someone had asked us beforehand whether it was possible to organize an entire semester virtually, we would have laughed and waved goodbye. And now we will finish the semester as planned... Events that go beyond teaching, such as our IMS seminars, are also taking place online via BigBlueButton after a short break, such as the last seminar on "TISAX - ISO 27001 in the automotive industry" with our cooperation partner, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH. The summary of the participating companies: consistently positive.
Without the commitment of our students and lecturers, their perseverance, dedication and hard work, this would not have been possible. We are also in the fortunate position of being able to teach all of our course content virtually. We have all acquired media skills and will retain the experience we have gained from virtual teaching and communication even when we are back in the classroom. Many thanks also to the Center for eLearning for its support in matters large and small!
