Council meeting minutes from 2024-11-07

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

Students' Council Position on SE-Lab

Two weeks ago we discussed the potential issues of this years SE-Lab iteration. We wanted to make a decision on our stand on that last week which was postponed due to low attendance.

Manuel presents opinions from members who could not be at the meeting in person. There was some discussion about the current state of SE-Lab as a block course. However, as already discussed there is no way, without changing the study programme altogether, there is not much that can be done about that.
Generally there was a sentiment that a change is required in some way.

A general discussion emerged whether how much of a change we can and should request. Not all changes might be feasible to implement through one or more iterations. Generally we observe that some change was implemented in communication after our discussion with the SE Lab last year.

Manu generally asked the audience whether we want to ask for a mayor reconstruction or not. Simon gave his opinion that he believes the main issue is inconsistencies between the reference and implementations. He suggests to allocate a dedicated person that can act as a "single source of truth" during the SE-Lab. Daniel mentions that this might lead to a bottleneck in how fast people can receive information. Simon clarifies that he imagines this more as person that can fix known bugs in the specification/implementation.
Several persons noted that it would be helpful to have one "Knowledge Base" that is continuously updated with questions and unclarity.

Manuel reminds people that he did not want to have detailed suggestions on this level, but more structural suggestions on how the SE-Lab can be changed.

Another proposal of Simon was to reduce the cooldown between test runs. Lukas informed that there already is a decrease in the cooldown over time. We are unclear of whether there is a technical reason for this or what the reasoning behind that is. Students mentioned that it would be nicer to have more information about the frequency of test runs.

Manuel voices his opinion. From his point of view the SE-Lab did not improve enough since last year. He suggest that there is a need for a bigger change. He had talks with people who have organized or attended similar courses at other universities. One example was the course at TU Dortmund. In their course there is no individual phase. Each group had a daily " stand up" with a group to keep track of the progress.
If the group passes the required amounts of tests they pass as a group. Otherwise the tutor can pinpoint whether individual members contributed enough.

Manuel proposes the following:
- Keep the excercise phase as is
- Do the single phase after that
- His reasoning is that currently most people drop out in the single phase. With that change people who drop out early would not "waste" their whole summer break.
- Afterwards Manuel would like to have a group phase in a similar manner as done in Dortmund, where people can individually proof that they have sufficient knowledge even if their group failed
He mentions the following potential difficulties:
- Tutors may not be qualified enough to make a decision whether people "contributed enough"

Daniel summarizes his opinion: He also generally agrees that a bigger restructuring is required, as little changes will take too long to take effect. He believes that this are also issues in other courses but the tutors are "band-aiding" this in many situations. If the number of tutors is fixed then their should be ways to better utilize the tutors e.g. by restructuring.

There were discussion about the necessity of the individual phase. It is supposedly intended to single out students who get carries through the group phase. There was discussions to swap the two phases which supposedly introduces difficulties as people might refer to the reference implementation of the single phase too much during the following group phase.

Manuel asks the room whether we would prefer continuously small changes, but rather a more severe restructuring. He proposes that we vote on the following options:
- Option 1: Keeping it the current way but having small iterations of changes to continuously improve
- Option 2: Suggest that we think that SE-Lab required a greater structural change to be succesful in the future. E.g. similar to what Manuel suggested

We voted on these options:
- Option 1: 0 Votes
- Option 2: 5 Votes
- Abstaining: 1 Vote (Lukas)

Manuel suggest that we collect the problems and summarize them.
The following points were suggested:
- SE-Lab is currently too demanding and has too high expectations, which is caused by the current strained timeframe. We believe that this has serious impacts on the students mental health.
- The Specification is conflicting to the reference implementation and too ambiguous on many fronts. This leads to severe frustration for students.
- We believe that currently the tutors may not be do not have enough of an effect, which e.g. reflect in long queues in the office hours. In combination with the unclear specification this leads to situations where they are misused as test oracles.
- We currently think that the SE-Lab cannot exist as a regular course (running throughout the semester) due to the restrictions of the study regulations
- With the current structure of groups in the group phase there is no clear way how disagreements are resolved if they group cannot come to an agreement

We postpone further discussions on potential alternatives to the SE-Lab to a later meeting.

Donations to Food Carrier instead of Winterhilfe

Last week we decided to donate money to the Winterhilfe for the NikoFete. Unfortunately the AStA cannot directly take donations due to legal reasons.

There is also a food carrier in the basement of the Mensa. We thought about donating their last year but we discarded the idea as we would have to buy things. AStA proposed to us to manage the money for the food carrier. Manuel asked whether we want to use this option to donate towards the food carrier or the Tafel who would be next in the voting order.

Food carrier: 3
Tafel: 1
Abstaining: 1

RindPhi LAN Party Test run

Manuel wants to do a test run for our LAN Party (23.11.2024).

He wants to do a test run on (16.11.2024/17.11.2024) he asked who would ask to drop by. 4,5 people volunteered to drop by.

Manuel will soon provide some more concrete information and set up a poster. People can buy tickets and pay in cash at the students council. It is also possible to pay via bank transfer.

Strasbourg Christmas Excursion

We want to have an excursion to Strasbourg. The Students Council of Romanic Languages is interested in joining us. Manu will settle on a day until tomorrow.
Manu started looking into Shuttle Busses but we dont have a number yet. He aims for an upper limit of 20 Euros.
An alternative would be the Saar-Elsass Ticket. Which under optimal conditions would be 7,50 per persons on weekends and 15 Euro during the week.

He asks for opinions which option would be preferable. Generally the bus allows much more flexibility. We think that it highly depends on prices of busses. We should first get a quota and see how many people would need to sign up to get a reasonable price. Based on that we can set a minimum number of registrations required to have this happen.

Advent of Code

Anton will again set up an Advent of Code leaderboard.

We want to advertise it on the website and maybe also posters and flyers.

Deans Lunch

Alex organized the Deans Lunch. It will be on 28.11.2024 at noon (until 2PM) in meeting room 002 in the MMCI. All voluntary and elected members are invited to join, apart from that it is not public.
There is a topic list in our internal group to collect topics. If anyone wants access they should contact Alex.

Feedback Schuelerinformationstag

Manuel gave feedback on the Informationstag.

Manuel liked Simons installation but apparently we are boomers and are out of touch, as pupils did not recognize our pictures.

Manuel complained that there were organizational issues, as basically nothing was set up at our booth. He had the impression that something would have been set up. There was no information material or advertisement. It looked very boring to the pupils. This was very sad and looked unprofessional. This should be improved next time.

November Breakfast(?)

As previously announced we maybe want to have another breakfast at the end of November. To evaluate whether this is feasible, Lukas asks everyone to fill out this poll until Sunday: https://nuudel.digitalcourage.de/ftLXMDuVJ7RE8Vo3

Note: If you are not already in our Telegram Lukas, please contact Lukas directly (@LuAbelt or via E-Mail) to receive updates on the planning