The pandemic as an accelerator

Anyone who hears Prof. Dr. Dr. Walter Blocher talk about the possibilities of digital teaching is almost inevitably infected by the Austrian scientist's enthusiasm: "When students can pause a lecture or watch it several times at will with asynchronous digital teaching, or when virtual group rooms for small groups can be created in seconds with synchronous digital teaching, then that's even better than in the real world," says Prof. Blocher during the interview, which takes place via zoom.

Prof. Blocher is particularly taken with the possibilities offered by this video conferencing platform: "How the company has managed to switch from an average of 10 million daily users to more than 300 million in a very short time, without any noticeable drop in quality, is really impressive," says the lawyer, who heads the Department of Civil Law, Corporate Law and Information Law at the University of Kassel. Among other things, he is an internationally recognized expert on the topic of blockchain. For example, he has been using Zoom for more than two years to maintain the contacts of the Blockchain-Center.eu together with other universities from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, for example to organize workshops for doctoral students.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Roßnagel is also a lawyer and teaches at the University of Kassel - where he heads the Public Law department, with a focus on environmental and technology law. At the same time, he is the university's CIO, or Chief Information Officer. This means that he is responsible for controlling technical information management. As part of this role, he also took a close look at Zoom - and for the renowned data protection expert, critical aspects initially prevailed: "As with many other companies based in the U.S., data protection at Zoom was treated rather neglectfully for a long time," Prof. Roßnagel describes. In a mid-March analysis, he therefore came to the conclusion that the data protection concerns were too far-reaching to support large-scale use at the university.

Criticism shows effect

This criticism obviously had an effect: a short time later, Zoom improved its terms and conditions and, among other things, made it possible for data traffic to be handled exclusively via European servers. "This makes it much easier to ensure compliance with data protection guidelines," explains Prof. Roßnagel. These and other improvements led the legal expert to change his opinion at the beginning of April and recommend the use of Zoom with appropriate safeguards for the entire university. This recommendation was also endorsed by the Hessian Data Protection Commissioner, and the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts (HMWK) recommended that all universities in the state follow this "Kassel protection concept."

The university management of the University of Kassel then procured 1,000 licenses for teachers in a short time. "That sounds like a lot at first, but even this high number of licenses is still not enough for everyone who has expressed a need," says Thomas Vetter. He heads infrastructure management at the University of Kassel's IT Service Center (ITS). Together with the dean's offices of the departments, he therefore created user lists in order to allocate licenses according to transparent criteria. Transparency is a big issue for Thomas Vetter anyway - so he summarized all the security-related adjustments he had to make within a few days on the uni-internal Zoom home page. "This way, users can read about everything we've done to protect their data as well as possible," says Vetter.

ITS has found a special solution for conversations that are subject to extended data protection, such as job interviews or interviews with appointment committees. "Here we want to ensure that all data runs exclusively through the University of Kassel's servers, so it takes place in a particularly secure environment."

The interview with him also takes place via Zoom, and he, too, is positively surprised overall by the stability of the platform: "We receive mostly positive feedback from teachers and students, which is really gratifying."

Positive experiences

Prof. Dr. Martina Deckert has also had positive experiences with digital teaching - she is the Dean of Studies in the Department of Business and Economics. After the first week of the "digital semester," she draws a positive interim conclusion: "The feedback from colleagues and the student body shows us that digital teaching is very open and well received," she says.

In addition to Zoom, she sees Moodle and Panopto as important support: "Moodle is the workhorse, so to speak; teachers can store all the important materials for their students on this learning platform," says Prof. Deckert. In her view, Panopto is the perfect complement to Zoom and Moodle, as this video platform allows videos to be created and uploaded quickly and intuitively.

"With these three platforms, the University of Kassel is really well positioned to make the digital summer semester a success," Prof. Blocher is also convinced.

The students' view

But how do students view the first weeks of this summer semester, which is so different from any semester before? Sophie Eltzner, chairwoman of the General Student Committee (AStA) at the University of Kassel, reports mixed feedback in a conversation at the end of April. "Many students tell us that they are very happy about the opportunity to follow the lectures at their own pace and flexibly adapted to their daily routine, and that some teachers have really put their backs into it to put on a good teaching program under difficult conditions," says Eltzner.

At the same time, however, many students also expressed frustration - whether because they felt they didn't have enough information about the semester's schedule or because they had technical problems. "Quite a few of my fellow students had to move back in with their parents at short notice, for example because earning opportunities fell away," Eltzner says. Often, however, there are not the technical prerequisites at home to participate in webinars or other digital courses. "Especially those students who don't have a fast Internet line or don't own a computer are currently at a great disadvantage," Eltzner says.

Overall, the AStA chairwoman fears that Corona will exacerbate the existing imbalances: "In our view, there is already an unacceptable gap between students from financially well-off homes and those from not so well-off backgrounds.As a university with a particularly large number of working-class children, Kassel is particularly affected by this and it does not correspond at all to our goal of educational equity," says Eltzner. That's why she and her colleagues from the AStA are working to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis, especially for students in need.

"For example, we have been given more than 60 computers by the Service Center for Teaching that were supposed to be sorted out and we have refurbished them so that they can be used by students," she says happily.

Overall, she sees the collaboration with the university's various departments and with the crisis team as positive. "Even if we would like to see even more support for students in some areas, for example to get an optional semester or alternative disadvantage compensation such as free attempts for this extraordinary semester off the ground, the clear effort to master the crisis together is noticeable from all sides," she notes.

Not expecting perfection

Dr. Oliver Fromm, who heads the crisis team as chancellor of the university, also reports on this effort. He informs staff and students about the state of affairs in regular e-mails. "I find it absolutely remarkable how quickly and with what great commitment our staff and students have responded to this situation, which is new to all of us," says Dr. Fromm. He describes that in many areas, work had to be completely reorganized in order to comply with the ban on contact imposed by the authorities on the one hand, but also to maintain all the necessary work for the basic operation of the university on the other.

"As stipulated by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts for all universities, we provide those administrative services in basic operations that are essential for research, teaching and operations. Thus, employment contracts are issued, tenders are launched and enrollments in studies are made, international students are advised, research applications and construction projects are further prepared. We also have to take into account that external service providers and suppliers depend on us, so we have set ourselves the goal of paying bills as quickly as possible, even during the crisis, for example."

Even though not everything is running completely smoothly, of course, he is very pleased overall with how the university's various departments are coping with the crisis. Prof. Blocher takes a similar view, pleading for composure in dealing with each other: "I always tell my students: this semester, we don't expect you to run everything perfectly - but please don't expect us to either."

Text: Markus Zens