Qua­ran­ti­ne is a strong chall­enge, that stu­dents and lec­tu­r­ers of the DHBW Mos­bach have ac­cept­ed wil­lingly.  Sin­ce 16 March the­re have been no class­room ses­si­ons at the uni­ver­si­ty and stu­dents have to teach them­sel­ves in all sub­jects to prepa­re for the exams co­ming in May. Our lec­tu­r­ers are available to ans­wer any ques­ti­ons and hold some lec­tures on­line.  In my cour­se such lec­tures were or­ga­ni­zed in rhe­to­ric and Java.

Rhe­to­ric with Sa­scha Klein, the busi­ness coach from Ber­lin, was not pas­si­ve lis­tening, but an in­ter­ac­ti­ve work, in which I par­ti­ci­pa­ted with gre­at en­thu­si­asm. It shows that group work and pre­sen­ta­ti­ons can also be suc­cessful when the par­ti­ci­pan­ts are not sit­ting in the same room. Our lec­tu­rer gave us va­rious tasks to im­pro­ve our rhe­to­ri­cal skills. One of them was vi­deo pre­sen­ta­ti­on. It felt like ac­tual­ly gi­ving a speech in front of an audience.

Java lec­tures via Dis­cord re­mind me of Java tu­to­ri­als, that stu­dents of­ten use as ad­di­tio­nal prac­ti­ce ma­te­ri­al. But I have to ad­mit, it works much bet­ter with the lec­tu­rer. I  don’t need to search for ex­pl­ana­ti­ons on the in­ter­net, if I don’t un­der­stand so­me­thing in the code. All small things are dis­cus­sed tog­e­ther and pos­si­ble ca­ses are tried out.

In my opi­ni­on, on­line lec­tures are a good and, for­t­u­na­te­ly, fe­a­si­ble way out of the cur­rent si­tua­ti­on. But I don’t con­sider them to be pos­si­ble in the long run, they can­not re­place the at­ten­dance lec­tures at the DHBW com­ple­te­ly. Not all lec­tu­r­ers are wil­ling to teach their sub­jects in this way. Most of the lear­ning ma­te­ri­al (e.g. ma­the­ma­tics, cost and per­for­mance ac­coun­ting, …) re­mains for self-stu­dy. Alt­hough the lear­ning pro­cess at home is more re­la­xed, I would ra­ther go to the DHBW. It is much more con­ve­ni­ent to talk di­rect­ly to the lec­tu­rer and my fel­low stu­dents, if so­me­thing is un­clear to me, than to read th­rough a chap­ter in the script and then to have more ques­ti­ons. I am also con­vin­ced that face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on in­crea­ses work productivity.

I hope that the ac­cus­to­med dai­ly rou­ti­ne will soon be back and I am loo­king for­ward to the lec­tures at the DHBW!