First DHBW pha­se un­der co­ro­na conditions

Hel­lo and wel­co­me to the DHBW Mosbach/Bad Mer­gen­theim, we are hap­py to wel­co­me you here with us de­spi­te the cur­rent cir­cum­s­tances!” it sounds from the head­set. 30.11.2020, Start at the DHBW Bad Mer­gen­theim, to­day a litt­le different.

No whispe­red con­ver­sa­ti­ons with the neigh­bors to see if they are as ex­ci­ted as you are. No first get­ting to know and ex­chan­ging with the stu­dents around me, be­cau­se I sit in front of my lap­top alo­ne in my apart­ment. Then the ca­me­ras are tur­ned on and you get a first, blur­ry, im­pres­si­on of your fel­low stu­dents. The cour­se coor­di­na­tors in­tro­du­ce them­sel­ves and cla­ri­fy the or­ga­niza­tio­nal mat­ters, then it’s our turn. La­ter, the co­hort abo­ve us in­tro­du­ced them­sel­ves and told us about their ex­pe­ri­en­ces. At the end, the­re were a few get­ting-to-know-you games, and that was the end of my start at DHBW.

Did I ima­gi­ne the start dif­fer­ent­ly? – Yes and no. At
Ba­si­cal­ly, we were gi­ven ever­y­thing we nee­ded to know for the launch.

But of cour­se I would have pre­fer­red it if the who­le thing had ta­ken place in pre­sence. It would sim­ply have been a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent fee­ling, and would also have crea­ted a stron­ger bond bet­ween us stu­dents, which hap­pen­ed in this way only la­ter and also in a less per­so­nal way. It’s har­der to start in­iti­al con­ver­sa­ti­ons, to dis­co­ver com­mon to­pics and in­te­rests, and to find out who is on the same wa­ve­length as whom when you don’t have the per­son stan­ding in front of you.

But did it stop us from get­ting it all done de­spi­te the cir­cum­s­tance of on­line events? No! And that shows me that the who­le is­sue of “on­line events” is a ch­an­ge, but by no me­ans di­rect­ly a de­te­rio­ra­ti­on. The lear­ning con­tent was well con­vey­ed to us, we could al­ways ask ques­ti­ons, and even if the­re were pro­blems with the tech­no­lo­gy or the trans­mis­si­on, a so­lu­ti­on was al­ways found. Be­cau­se we were well in­cluded in the lec­tures and the­re was no pure fron­tal tea­ching, you could con­cen­tra­te well and work along de­spi­te the long sta­ring at the screen. Sin­ce we had the ca­me­ras on in some of the group work and lec­tures, we saw each other from time to time and were able to put faces to all the names. Of cour­se, the­re was­n’t much room for short pri­va­te con­ver­sa­ti­ons, be­cau­se ty­p­ing ta­kes lon­ger than tal­king and you still have to fol­low the lec­tu­re at the same time. The dis­cus­sions then had to be post­po­ned un­til af­ter the lec­tu­re. This meant that working on tasks tog­e­ther was then also used for all kinds of con­ver­sa­ti­on to­pics at the same time.

In the end, the exams tur­ned out a litt­le dif­fer­ent­ly. The first on­line exam in my life, and then four of them. The first one was quite unu­su­al, but it was not re­al­ly dif­fe­rent than if you had writ­ten it in per­son. We were al­lo­wed to use the per­mit­ted ma­te­ri­als, had 90 mi­nu­tes and had to pho­to­graph and upload the no­tes at the end.

I ima­gi­ned my first DHBW pha­se dif­fer­ent­ly, but all in all it was a suc­cessful theo­ry phase.

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