Council meeting minutes from 2025-10-22

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

ETCS Credit Points for FSR Work

---- INTRO ------

CS students council members can get credit for the work they do in their role (see task forces, attending meetings, helping out at events or generally being there for FAQs).

For some study programs this work needs to be validated by the other council members, therefore we sometimes have to do some votes.

---- DISCUSSION ------

We voted on the following members being eligible for credit points for doing council work:

Lizzie
Yes: 6
No: 0
Abstaining: 1

Yağmur
Yes: 6
No: 0
Abstaining: 1

---- CONCLUSION ------

Members that needed the formality now have their work validated.

We will use our standard internal doc for this (since the AStA template was not always approved) and also add this protocol vote just in case.

Student Council Elections

---- INTRO ------

Since currently there is a switch in the semester when the student council elections will take place, the current elected period is one semester longer then normal (3 semesters).

---- DISCUSSION ------

Since in this meeting only 7 out of 14 elected members were present, we voted on having an email vote contra to having a vote in the meeting:

Yes (for email): 3
No (in meeting): 1
Abstaining: 3

---- CONCLUSION ------

We will do an email vote internally for this.

Students Information day / Schülerinformationstag

---- INTRO ------

The Students Information day will be held on 30.10.2025 between 08:00 - 15:30, the CS students council is organizing a booth to represent the CS studies.

---- DISCUSSION ------

German 10 grade students are forced to attend this event, therefore the expected motivation on their side is somewhat low.

Last year our booth was not that high visited, one of the reasons was that there were stands in close vicinity which offered freebees (AStA offered popcorn). We might do the same with ice tea or other snacks.

There are options to get students attention:

- put the SIC letters in the way to interrupting the visitor flow

- have a 3D-model of campus where the SIC-buildings are highlighted in color.
-> contra: not that interesting, it is kinda big, but also just a better map

- 4 in a row game we used in iterations before, which is a bit more interactive

- somewhere on instagram there was a VR booth shown during the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, we could find out who did this.

- Ask SE chair for old SoPra projects (best would be the interactive ones).

---- CONCLUSION ------

We will try to reach out to the relevant persons for the options listed above.

Separate Busy Beaver Awards

---- INTRO ------

Discussion about splitting “core and advanced lectures” into two categories, since it could be unfair to threat them the same.

---- DISCUSSION ------

We currently have roughly: 50 QUALIS lectures per semester, 18 seminars 11 base (27 in two semesters).

Pro splitting:

In advanced lectures professors are more free to do what they are interested in / topics they are researching, therefore they might tend to have better scores.

The award is also an indicator for students for which lectures to take in future semesters, and core lectures are offered more regularly than advanced lectures.

Contra splitting:

Given that giving lectures and, by extension, sustaining the mandatory course offer is an integral part of a professor’s job. Splitting categories could decrease the incentive for lecturers to put more effort into their core lectures.

More prices could lead to diluting the awards.

One more bracket would also lead to a bit more spend money.

---- CONCLUSION ------

We decided to let the busy Beaver task force decide on this.

FIS (money) agreement will be done during the next award.

Entrepreneurship at UdS

---- INTRO ------

We were contacted by Triathlon by email regarding three step plan to put more about entrepreneurship in teaching. They are asking for members to take part in their advisory board.

---- DISCUSSION ------

Currently Triathlon has courses about this which should soon get more smoothly integrated in existing study programs. Furthermore, they would like to get a certificate course of study with 60 ECTS (Meaning you do this besides your study and get a piece of paper for it).

They want to setup an advisory board that should guide their plans into the right direction. For this they would like to have a student as member of the advisory board.

It is currently unsure what the requirements for this collaboration are, also what (approximate) workload and format the student member can expect.

Also nothing regarding pay is stated at the moment for this position.


---- CONCLUSION ------

We will tell them to ask AStA and or FSK (Meeting of all student councils) and we could put up advert posters on our pin board like we do with other companies.

Bioinformatics Alumnus Books

---- INTRO ------

An alumnus (Tobias) wrote us an email wanting to donate old books.

---- DISCUSSION ------

The books are regarding bioinformatics that he had and wanted to donate to someone at the university, if we had any use for them. He said that he had some textbooks from Brock, Lehninger, and some specific ones on drug design.

---- CONCLUSION ------

We will look up the author and see if they are profs at this university and have them signed and also ask our bibs if they want or could use the books.

Nikofete

---- INFO ------

This year we will hold the Nikofete event again. The Breakfast Task force will look into organizing it and is happy for any helpers.

We will also collect possible charity organizations for donations until the next meeting and then decide.

Strassburg

---- INTRO ------

Last year the CS students' council organized a city trip to Strassburg while there was a Xmas market. We figure out if we want / can do this again this year.

---- CONCLUSION ------

We found council members who will organize this event with the condition, that there are enough helpers on the event day. Therefore we will do a poll for helpers first and then depending on the support decide if it is feasible again this year.

FSR Recruitment Event

---- INTRO ------

The current CS student council is missing a bit support to help organize events and other things. This topic has been benched a while, so we look into it now.

---- DISCUSSION ------

There will be a "Have some Tea / Coffee and chat" event again in some weeks, which could be combined with a general what is CS council event.

We could also rent a seminar room and do a presentation like in StEP or some other form of event in the room.

Additional we could also ask professors to advertise this event during lecture.

---- CONCLUSION ------

An internal shared doc will be created to collect more ideas.

Crowded Lectures/Course Capacity

---- INTRO ------

Some lectures have limited the amount of seats, e.g. Data Networks (last semester) or HCI (this semester), which leads to students not being able to take the lecture (having to wait for the next iteration of the course).

---- DISCUSSION ------

We had this discussion in the deans lunch, but never came back to this. There are some core courses that are overrun with students and start to reach capacity problems. This needs to be addressed before this escalates further.

We did some open discussion trying to find methods to solve this:

1. Seminar system (Selecting multiple courses with priority setting)

This would only help if there are many courses available, if there are for example 3 courses from which 2 need to be selected, this would fail to be effective.

The seminar system would also need some time to wait for results, time in which lectures would already needed to be held, since the semesters tend to be short. Lectures could already be held while waiting.


2. Participation method:

Lectures ask after a short period for continuous active participation and until then have no assignment sheets or individual projects.

This method would not solve the problems with overrun lecture halls in the beginning our overworked tutors.

First two weeks no tutorials to filter out the students ditching the course could help with the tutor problem in the beginning.

Having an exercise sheet 0 that gives you at max 1 point to filter out not participation or very low effort answers. Having this as a filter would put a lot of responsibilities with resulting discussions on potential new tutors, this could be fixed by this being a tutor recommendation, e.g. "Are you sure you want to take this course? Are you prepared enough?"

3. Entry exam method:

This could lead to many students passing or even all with no reduction.

This would also add additional work load on the lecturer(s).
There are automated minitests (in moodle) to handle the work load. But the server could go offline and you do not get personalized feedback from a tutor.

4. First come first serve method:

First students to register get seats until full.

This disadvantages first semester students which do not have received their acceptance letter yet or international students who are still stuck in bureaucracy.

People could (let's be real, would) use bots to trick the system.

5. Mandatory attendance method:

Disadvantages students with part time jobs. Disadvantages students who do not live close to uni.

6. Relaxed tutorials method:

A solution for the tutor workload could be to make enlisting for tutorials optional, or have a general tutorial in the lecture hall.

Tutoring in small groups is more personal and often better.

---- CONCLUSION ------

There is no conclusion, this is a ongoing topic.