I am a dual stu­dent at DHBW Mos­bach and TecAlliance, my name is Adri­an and I am curr­ent­ly in the fifth se­mes­ter of the Busi­ness In­for­ma­tics course.

Un­fort­u­na­te­ly, due to the Co­vid 19 pan­de­mic, all cour­ses in the past theo­ry pha­se were held on­line using the “Mood­le” and “Big­BlueBut­ton” tools. This did not make the lec­tures any less ex­ci­ting than tho­se held on site, and the ma­jo­ri­ty of them were at least as good. Some lec­tu­r­ers made a point of com­mu­ni­ca­ting with their lec­tures via web­cam and head­set, while other lec­tu­r­ers pre­fer­red to re­cei­ve ques­ti­ons about their lec­tures via the chat function.

Alt­hough all lec­tures were held from home, the exams were con­duc­ted in pre­sence at the uni­ver­si­ty. This meant that every stu­dent had to tra­vel to Mos­bach for the exam pe­ri­od. In or­der to re­du­ce the fre­quen­cy of cont­act among the stu­dents as much as pos­si­ble, the ex­ami­na­ti­on pe­ri­od was re­du­ced to just th­ree days. The lear­ning stress was the­r­e­fo­re pre-pro­grammed and this as­sess­ment then un­fort­u­na­te­ly also pro­ved to be true.

Ho­we­ver, the se­mes­ter its­elf star­ted di­rect­ly with an ex­ci­ting pro­ject! Due to the Co­vid 19 pan­de­mic, this pro­ject, which was ac­tual­ly sup­po­sed to be car­ri­ed out in the fourth se­mes­ter, had to be post­po­ned to the fifth. The pro­ject its­elf was about do­ing a si­mu­la­ti­on of a pro­ject. The goal was to de­sign a rol­ler co­as­ter and we were the pro­ject ma­na­gers for that. So de­cis­i­ons had to be made, sche­du­les had to be ad­he­red to and risks had to be weig­hed up. While at the be­gin­ning ever­y­thing see­med ma­na­geable and simp­le, towards the end of the si­mu­la­ti­on it was just a mat­ter of not fal­ling into the red and run­ning be­hind sche­du­le. Every pro­ject par­ti­ci­pant was cer­tain­ly able to take away va­luable ex­pe­ri­ence from this simulation.

An­o­ther high­light of the se­mes­ter was de­fi­ni­te­ly the port­fo­lio exam. In this type of exam, you and other group mem­bers had the task of de­ve­lo­ping a pro­to­ty­pe over the cour­se of the en­ti­re se­mes­ter. This se­mes­ter, the task was to de­ve­lop an eco­no­mic si­mu­la­ti­on using web in­ter­faces. For ex­am­p­le, the group I was in si­mu­la­ted a fis­cal year of a bicy­cle ma­nu­fac­tu­rer un­der sea­so­nal sa­les fluc­tua­tions and un­fo­re­seen costs.

Even though it got a bit stressful towards the end of the theo­ry pha­se, I felt that this se­mes­ter was va­luable due to va­rious pro­jects and lec­tures and I am also re­al­ly loo­king for­ward to my last se­mes­ter whe­re I will also wri­te my ba­che­lor the­sis, which will start soon.