Council meeting minutes from 2024-12-05

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

Problems with EML

Willy joined us to report about problems that he noticed in EML.
Lack of Preparation: He has the impression that lectures are insufficiently prepared. It seems that the lecturer has not taken enough time to review the slide deck leading to them sometimes not understanding and skipping them.
Missing red thread: There's no apparent red thread across lectures making it hard to follow.
Confusion regarding books: There are two recommended book. Apparently, it was poorly communicated which one acts as lecture notes and which one is only optional supplementary reading material.
Inconsistent Grading: Follow-up errors were not considered.
Corrected assignments: Assignments are corrected with handwriting. Sometimes there's to little feedback, sometimes it's illegible.
Unclear phrasing in assignments: Some assignments where phrased ambiguously.

Simon: Some of the problems might be specific to tutors or too subjective (e.g. unfair grading) to be criticized. However, he attended another lecture of Valera as well and thinks that some of the issues mentioned for EML were also present in that course, especially insufficient preparation by the lecturer.
Manu: EML is obligatory for some programmes. Other students may attend this lecture either as part of Wahlpflicht or for example as Master students. The classification as advanced lecture is confusing, especially given that ML is also a core course.
Lukas: EML has been pain point for several iterations. (Refer to old thought protocols.) Some issues mentioned back then are on-line with issues observed in the current iteration. He reasons that there might be some fundamental flaws with this course.
Manu: EML seems to be a hot potato passed around by professors. He is of the belief that there's no clear professor in charge of the course. Simon corrects that Valera is indeed named in Modulhandbuch as responsible person and that given she is a professor for a topic related to Machine Learning, this lecture should very much fall into her expertise.
Daniel asks whether Valera simply is not familiar with the slides, or if she doesn't know which topics are to be covered. Willy stated that he cannot really judge that.
Ferdinand: Having to handle EML as well as ML is a very high burden on the lecturer. Someone stated that there are 500 students registered in CMS. Given that there's no designated dedicated lecturer for ML lectures her being overwhelmed is to some extend understandable.
Alex: 500 attendees is immense and puts the lecture on a similar level as e.g. Prog1.
Manu: University has been looking for a ML professor for quite a while. Currently, they are waiting for a professor to accept the position.
Manu suggests having postdocs as helpers/co-lecturers, like for example the case in Prog1, to reduce the burden.
Ferdinand: CMS lists Kavya Gupta as lecturer.
Alex: Valera essentially is having her hands full with lectures whole year as she holds EML as well as ML.
Manu wants to schedule a meeting and bring forward suggestions for improvements. EML is a rather new course so feedback is vital.
Daniel: ML has become a de facto requirement for many seminars. Thus, even students not required by their programme to attend have incentive to. This might explain the high number of attendees.
Manu and disagrees, stating that this also applies to other subject like for example CySec-related courses.
Simon: Unclear what course is supposed to achieve/cover, especially given its double role as base/advanced course.
Willy: Two books as lecture material are a lot. Even though one book is primarily used.
Anton: Books similar.
Simon asks whether requirements stated in Modulhandbuch in line with actual requirements. We couldn't answer that.
Lukas: Valera didn't take over the lecture “recently”. She has been responsible for it for at least three years. The “Base/Advanced lecture” classification is primarily just poor wording and probably due to constraints imposed by Studienordnung.

Simon volunteers to have the meeting with Valera. Anton would be nice as well but can't “due to logistical circumstances”. Ferdinand will join Simon. They intend to schedule a meeting before Christmas.

🔥 Hackellauf ❤️‍🔥

Hack received an offer. It's custom to have a torch run to show the professor that we'd like to keep them at Saarland University.
On the day of Nikofete (2024-12-13) we'll have a torch run for Prof. Hack. We've already bought torches and mulled wine as well as „Kinderpunsch“. University has been informed about the event. University president Prof. Santen has been informed and invited; we'll pass his office on our route.
University initially wasn't too pleased about this event and raised several concerns. However, in the past we've already been in contact with Saarbrücken's firebrigade, asking them how to have torch runs in a safe fashion. Kevin, who is tasked with organisation, forwarded our correspondence to university. Apparently, this cleared University's concerns.
Manu invites all students including FSR members to attend the Hackellauf; especially given that quite many already have attended courses held by Hack.
Manu also asks for funny anecdotes to incorporate into his speech.

Manu hopes for a successful Hackellauf and already shifts blame to Kevin in case something goes south.
Anton: Years without torch runs are not good years. He is therefore happy that there will be a torch run.

Prof. Hack already shared with us that he liked the posters and seems to be looking forward to the torch run.

Simon: A bunsen burners would be nice for easy bootstrapping of the torch kindling cascade.
Someone proposed to speed things up with Isopropyl Alcohol. No, just no. Kevin already promised to University that we won't do stupid things.

Manu will go to lectures dressed as Santa to invite students to the torch run. He's looking for somebody to accompany him dressed as „Knecht Ruprecht“ and shame students/lecturers by giving them pieces of coal. Simon proclaimed that he desires to be given coal. Lukas allowed Manu to use Schwenker coal.

NEXT

Lukas: NEXT is dead
Alex: The NEXT taskforce will meet soon™.

RindPhi-LAN Feedback

The event went well. Manu thanked the IT team.

Unfortunately, there were only few attendees. Manu is sad (and requests to not be salted for the time being).
The attendees that were present seemed to have had fun. It would be nice to have this kind of event again.
However, Manu doesn't really want to host it again given the amount of effort and little number of attendees.

Simon suggests having another LAN but in the FSR room.
Alex (as IT team member and attendee): The group working space of library was a really cool space. He'd like to have this event semi-regularly (though maybe internally). [Editor's note: He almost completed Portal.] The event, vibe and location was cozy. However, one attendee seemed to have felt out of place and left quite early, having spoken and played with fellow attendees almost not at all. One of our attendees apparently was a brief member of FSR in the past. He was person that bestowed the huge Yoda cup to us. While he apparently enjoyed the event, he was a little disappointed that he found no fellow players for the game he wanted to play. Alex proposes to incorporate some kind of LAN area into the Game Night. Manu disagrees and emphasizes that he won't volunteer for that.
Manu bolsters that he beat the Enderdragon in Minecraft. Additionally, he built an “interesting red stone construction”.
Daniel: Enderdragonはなんですか？ He raised doubts whether this type of event is in general well-received by students.
Manu: Other universities have successful LAN. [Editor's note: Ulm for example had one the same weekend.]
Anton: Was the event only advertised to CS students or across whole University? [Editor's Note: He also destroyed our ears with static noise.]
Manu: The event was advertised across the whole University. Maybe the chosen date was poor? He'll have a survey asking students whether they are interested at all and why they didn't attend.
Alex: If AStA is interested, we can support them – especially in terms of IT. People were having doubts that AStA would like to have this event.
Simon proposes the incorporate the LAN into Mensabar? Or maybe advertise it there.
Alex deemed the location unfit giving that there are some issues with the electrical installation there.

FSR goes to Christmas Market

We want to visit Strasbourg and rented two busses for that. We joined forces with the Students' Council of Romance studies. Romance students purchased 7 tickets, Computer Science students 87 tickets. In total, there are 4 tickets left. 3 of those are currently reserved and will be released soon™.
Manu did a whoopsie. The second bus has two seats less and, more importantly, does not have a bus bar 🥲.

Manu asks whether we should depart from Strasbourg an hour earlier. He argues that on Sunday it might be hard for attendees to get home using public transport. Even when departing earlier, we would still have 7 hours.
Lukas: Later in the evening would be preferable given that Christmas Markets are more magical when it's dark outside. But he is nevertheless not opposed.
Simon making use of his Math degree: There would be roughly 2 hours of darkness.

Manu is looking for helpers: Simon, Alex and Daniel volunteered. Maybe, there will be some more.
Manu: Do we want to do stuff during the drive? How do we distribute across the two busses?
Daniel: Ted has some ideas for the bus trip.
Alex: Sleeping sounds good.
Manu: Maybe one party bus and one boring bus.
Lukas: We should distribute beforehand. Additionally, we should have one person in charge of each bus, e.g. for making announcements.
Manu: There'll be one Telegram group for organization purposes and one for attendees.
Simon: wants to introduce constraint solving for the process of grouping people.

“X-mas” [sic!] Tree

Daniel proposes to purchase a plastic X-mas [sic!] tree specifically for the FSR.
He proposed this to FIS already.

Lukas: There should be a Christmas tree in the Käfig. Anton concurs.
Manu: Tree must be small. We only have little space, especially during Nikofete.
Lukas: If decorated nicely, could be cool. Trees are generally not expensive.
Manu: What about storage afterwards?
Lukas: Trees usually can be disassembled.

Daniel checked the Käfig and found 2 (written out: two!) Christmas trees. One apparently is Daniel's property that he was already looking for.

We voted on whether we want to buy a Christmas tree for less than 40 €.
We agreed (5 in favour / 0 against / 1 abstaining) and tasked him with buying one.

AStA Flohmarkt

There'll be an „AStA-Flohmarkt“ the 18th December (starting 11:00) in Mensa.
People can set up booths.
We were asked whether we'd like to have a booth. We would be allowed to sell things. One idea would be to sell our left-over mulled wine from the Nikofete.

Lukas asks if anybody wants to take this up. Manu volunteered. He intends to sell keycaps, mulled wine and “Children Punch”.

Daniel: There are still wafers left. These could be used as well.