There are little to no events/social life on the Deggendorf campus of the DIT, which mostly boils down to:
| No One on Campus |
↔ | No Events on Campus |
Most student clubs are looking foreward to the 'Erstsemestertag', as a first opportunity to make friends.
During the semesters though, these (as well as the other project / culturaly-active groupings) are extremely hard to find, due to their negative experience with organizing events themselves.
Students on the other hand are spending as little time as possible on campus, either due to their 'drive-to-DIT -> Lecture -> drive-home' habit or due to the lack of social interactions.
In both cases, social life of students takes place primarily outside of the 'student life' (e.g. in student halls of residence, nightclubs and private apartments).
As a kind of result of the previous section, there is hardly any connection between local, german students and international students.
Imagine this: You are spending months to research a place to study abroad which fits your study/interests/social/housing needs in an internationally eligible country.
After arriving and having spent your first few weeks you realize, that the only german people you talk to are lecturers and DIT staff.
It is confusing to hear, that international students in Deggendorf do meet more mexican/chinese students than german.
The reason why this problem is mentioned first, is that it is the most persistent and the main source of the following sections. It also creates an information gap between new students and ones that have already invested a few semesters gaining much implicit information (regarding club-founding, local networks, how to reach certain professors, ...).
Boy, oh Boy our mail system!
Regarding the receiving perspective, most students either learn to manage the chaos or leave it after the first 2 semesters. Though it has gotten better, you are still receiving e-mails that are simply not relevant to you (information for firstsemesters, notices for specific student age groups and the "Karrierenewsletter") Regarding the latter, it is incomprehendable why there is a normal subscription system for DIT news, a moderation system for students but the "Karrierenewsletter"s (and some additional 'carrer'-mails) are broadcasted to anyone - no questions asked (taking 1-2 MB per E-mail that are piling up over the years as biggest issue for given storage limit). Speaking of lecturers, only around halve of persons are sending their messages in both english and german and more importantly using iLearn for notifications. This system not only allows an easy backtracking of messages, which are sent to the fitting student groups (without the knowledge of their actual names), it also allows students to un-subscribe threads they are not interested in. Sadly most are more convinced of MS Teams Groups, direct mails, or require the help of the study course assistant.
Regarding the student perspective of sending an e-mail, things are equally bad. After getting frustrated that one can not simply send an e-mail to 'students@th-deg.de', some turn towards their favourite lecturer (who should send out their mail) and some abuse the e-mail address book. The Moderate Mail portal - which serves as moderation tool for using the stundent distribution lists - is not described anywhere. It is intransparent, ineffective and worst of all: it is exploitable. Usually, a delegation of the "Studentischer Konvent" is responsible for moderating e-mail requests. In the past, each delegation of the SK consisted of <= 4 persons, hence the work was usually done by one single person. Secondly, it's rather unlikely for students to stroll around in the DIT intranet to find this description, which e-mail distribution list are existing and best-fit for your need.
The introduction of the MyTHD portal finally introduced a first glance of what (IT-)services our university offers. Sadly, the listed platforms and services are neither complete nor sorted according to relevance.
Last but not least, there are other aspects like psychological support, regional transport and housing options, that most universities is able to display in one central website. As these informations are findable via basic search engines, it is a minor critique (that is usually being offered).
Hot Take: The "Studentischer Konvent" is basically dead.
... or in other words: There is no active representation and communication regarding local and bavaria-wide university policy.
If there was any publicity at all (e.g. newsletters, records of achievements, meeting notes, contact options for students), there were more knowledge of the university elections (2% students participated in 2021), more students would run for the elected roles, the "Studentischer Konvent" would organize more than 4 meetings per semester and start networking with other student representation groups (e.g. Landes-Asten-Konferenz).
According to the missing attendance and participation of the later networks, there was no representation of deggendorf student's interests in the new "Hochschulinnovationsgesetz" (the fundamental law for all bavarian universities), that has been decided upon in July 2022.
This law fundamentally changes the structure, intention and rights of universities and constitutes the mentioned LAK as constitutional student representation in the bavarian Landtag.
PS: According to this law, universities are now able to discriminate international students via studying fees.
Out student clubs are completely decoupled from the DIT university policy ... and hence any projects of the "Studentischer Konvent". The activity and interest concerning university policy will quite probably increase, if these 2 sides had any form of frequent communication / participation.
The Ideenmanagement is a sad implementation for 'anonymously' creating/voting improvement requests by students. First of all, its usage - as well as its publicity - is quite low (usually 20-200 votes/7 000+ students, where students can vote once per day). Secondly, creating an request on the platform is a rather ineffective way to initiate change. As of 01.09.2022, there are unmanaged requests that have been unresolved since 2018 and overall way more rejected requests than impementations:
80 (28 %) abgelehnt / rejected
149 (52 %) geschlossen / closed
10 ( 4 %) in Arbeit / in progress
7 ( 2 %) offen / open
38 (14 %) umgesetzt / implemented
Sidenote: The state geschlossen includes both rejected or implemented ideas.
In recent cases it seems to be used as 'not relevant' or 'we are not responsible'.
Sadly though, the tone policy is ultimately derogatively (e.g. 505).
Ultimately, the platform is intransparent (of its moderation) and disappointing for people dreaming of change of the DIT and sometimes filled with empty promises (see 508, 504 - 502, 456, 447, ...).
Sidenote: Changes of the DIT are happening, though by elected function owners / without reference to low-level interests.
Sustainability is hardly present in lectures, campus design and university policy.
As setting, you might want to check out the perspective of other bavarian universities and the conservative, trend-based scenarios of the IPPC.
Back to the DIT:
In 2014 the DIT expanded the Deggendorf campus with 5 black, 'modern' buildings for ~50 million.
For some physical reason, these are inhabitable in the summer and require heavy cooling or individual fans for each person.
On the 20.08.2022 a student created an request on the 'Ideenmanagement' portal to show the above mentioned talk from Dr. Mark Benecke in the ceremony of the first-semesters' day.
Unfortunately, this request has been refused within 4 days, as that the Freshman Day "is intended to give the clubs and students the opportunity to explore and get to know the university" (translated from german).
Apart from the prompt reaction (which strongly suggests, that this idea was not discussed in any commitee), it states that 'Getting to know the university' is unrelated to addressing the most influential phenomenon of our century.
Is it justified to speak of education if this issue, that is highly important and relying on scientific progress [Michael Regan], is unambiguously dodged?
At the time of writing, there is a new DIT sub-website in creation, which may indicate a minimal sense for transparency (and effort?).
Failing an exam can be de-moralizing possibly due to its supprise, though also due to its impact. In some universities after failing an exam, it is possible to have a second attempt after the semester. At the DIT, failing an exam means enrolling this course again in the next (few) semester(s), which implys having to learn the contents again after +/- 6 months (at the same time you are preparing for any other exams). One can imagine, that this mostly leads to students delaying their open exams (taking longer to study) in order to finish their 'easier' ones.
One thing 'Online-Lectures' have revealed is, that there are hardly and learning-/peer-groups in the first few semesters (other than pre-existing friendships). From our limited perspective this phenomenon has been existing for many years now (and was only brought to focus). Older students are only tutoring/mentoring younger students if they are being paid (SHK) and there have always been quite few learing groups in open lecture rooms (non-curricular learning always took place in private appartments).
In Deggendorf the number of students are usually rising via untalented, unmotivated pupils.
This sadly affects both the talented, inquisitive students as well as the commited lecturers, which is way more incluencial on the education quality of the DIT and may lead to assertions like:
"Why should I care about [the current state of a topic, that I currently lecture] ?"
- 2 rather senior-ish professors, that we will not denunciate publicly
Since practical experience is a inevitable aspect of almost all study courses, all these students are expected to visit companies for up to 5 months for their work placement. As one can imagine, getting to know companies - which students can apply to - is relatively hard (in comparison to the logal, german student). Luckily there is the Firstcontact fair, the 'Karrierenewsletter' (which may be ignored due to the german title), workshops arranged by professors, printed advertisements on the magnet boards of each faculty, 'how to apply in germany' seminars and some other options. Still all these seem way too uncoordinated and unconnected in total, that you are mostly better off only sticking to one specific information source (or start your own company-networking adventure).
Lecturers have really limited feedback, reguarding their education quality and effectiveness. This is both due to the mayority of unresponsive/inactive students, as well as the ill feedback structure reguarding the course surveys. Asking for feedback a few weeks before the exam will not result in constructive (or other 'negative') feedback, as students fear of effecting an harder exam. It is understandable, that feedback given after the exam will be possibly filled with frustrated statements, but the current system is worse than not explicitly asking for feedback (as it is forcing 'positive-only' feedback and discouraging to give feedback in general.
For a resumé on "digital education" in universities due to the pandemy, Deutschlandfunk interviewed lecturers and one student representation in bavaria.