Council meeting minutes from 2023-12-15

minutes of the students' representative council for study programs of computer science

Student Working Rooms

Felix proposed a new layout for the student working rooms. The rooms 013, 105 and 106 are intended to be used as group working rooms with the current numbers of seats, 32 and 24 places respectively. In room 104 each place is surrounded by sound barriers, so students can attend online meetings there. Room 103 should be completely silent.
We already discussed this with the department and they are okay with our proposal.
Some new idea was to move the high stools and tables to the MMCI as we do not have too much use of them

Bachelor&Master thesis for library

It used to be the case that theses were also submitted to the library such students could read old theses for inspiration etc. Also that made the thesis publicly available, so for students it is similar to a first publication (although without actual impact).
With the new study regulations this is not mandatory anymore. A possible solution would be to donate an additional copy to the library and sign an agreement to allow the library to publish the thesis.
With Corona there was a regulation to submit the thesis electronically, but there are issues with a server where the are hosted. We could make an agreement with Dagstuhl to use their servers or similar.
We were asked to host that agreement on our website and do general promotion. However the agreement needs to be also approved with the Department and Examination Boards. We will also ask the examination office to link this form at the submission page.

Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures

We were approached by participants of the Introductin to Algorithms and Data Structures course. Apparently the deadline for an exercise sheet was moved earlier (and after complaints) later but at the same time release another sheet with the same deadline. In general the students do not know anything about the organisation. Worse than that, the tutors do not know much more than the students do. The workload of the tutors is pretty high, on average they need to grade about 21 submissions each week.
The students further complain about a lack of teaching resources, incoherent publishing of the own materials.
We want to write a very explicit email to the lecturer/assistants with asking for a reply within a week. We also want to inform the dean of studies immediately as the semester is halfway over.
We will vote about this via Email, Anton V. will take care that this topic is not lost.

Ticket Party

We want to clean up the council room thoroughly before the next council is constituted (and also the room is very dirty). We think one day is enough to get everything done this time. So that we are undisturbed, the ticket party will take place on a weekend. This way, all members should be availabla to be present. Anton V. will create a Doodle.

EML

We were brought to attention that the assignment sheets are badly designed. Apparently the Exercises very detached from the lecture, seem outdated and are harder than third-semesters are able to answer.
Apparently the forum is rarely used, but sometimes questions there are getting deleted. However we do not have proofs for that.
We are now aware that a potential issue exists, but so far we do not think it is too bad. We would bring this up again next Week with more people that do more know about this.