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My name is Ulrike Homann,

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and I'm the study coordinator for the Biology Department at the TU Darmstadt. The Office for Student Affairs is basically the central point of contact for students,

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and I'm in charge of this office. We spend a lot of time giving advice, and we organise the entire study program.

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Well, in non-corona times - or perhaps we should go back a step before that to the time before we set up this Moodle course,

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the Office for Student Affairs is basically the central point of contact for the student.

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And for it to work, we had fixed consultation times when the students could come

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for advice, to collect something, to hand something in, hand in their final papers and so on.

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And then last winter semester we started thinking

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that we would actually like to have a different way of communicating with the students,

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to just provide them with a little bit of service and an offer,

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because students nowadays use lots of digital offers, they use chats.

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And in fact we found that they don't spend that much time on the phone.

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They do still send emails, but even that sometimes seems to be a bit of an obstacle.

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And we wanted something that would accommodate this change in students' behaviour in communication.

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So at the beginning of the last winter semester we started a Moodle course in order to give the students this opportunity.

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Well, one idea was not to have fixed office hours any more, but to issue appointments outside office hours in Moodle to give students the opportunity

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to contact us and to decouple a lot of this presence that is necessary in the Office for Student Affairs.

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And that was our original intention, to set up a course like this,

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and then, of course, this happened. The course had already been set up when corona led to a lockdown at the university as well,

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and we had this course, and then of course were able to use it well and to develop it further.

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First of all, to have the opportunity to get to know Moodle and to use it as we need it for our purpose.

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Because Moodle is actually meant for teaching rather than for organisation,

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we had to be a little creative and use the opportunities that Moodle offers a little differently than is actually intended.

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And we did a lot of brainstorming over the time,

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developed a lot out of a situation that wasn't really very serious, and then we became more specific

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and we said, let's just try it, go for it, and see how Moodle can support us, whether there are any activities

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a similar function or than can be used so that they provide the functions that we need.

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And with lots of trying things out and talking to each other and a lot of creativity we then finally got to the point

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where we were able to set our course as it is today.

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The concept of the course is

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that students receive as much information as possible about their study course and up-to-date information on our Moodle course.

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And over time we tried to integrate more and more service offers that we normally offer in presence

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on site in this Office of Student Affairs course in order to be able to offer a 24/7 service.

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That's not to say, of course, that we spend 24 hours at our computers working away at it,

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but it does make the students feel

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that they can contact us at any time and in a clearer way than just with an email,

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which of course you can also write at any time of the day or night.

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And over time we increasingly came to the realisation that we can also process applications or documents using this course,

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that we can send certificates about the course back to the students, and that in fact we can actually map our entire service

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as we offer it in the Office for Student Affairs in Moodle. Moodle has two sides. It's very flexible,

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so we can make changes quickly and the students can see that straight away,

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which isn't always the case on the homepage. And what is probably also important is that suddenly we all now have access.

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So of course there may be emails that go to everyone,

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but it's much easier for us as a team in the Office for Student Affairs to see what comes in where,

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what has been processed, and where there are things that we need to talk about again?

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We have now collected all this on one platform, so this

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has changed our work a little and it has become more structured and clearer.

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So of course it is a tremendous help now, when we can't see each other every day,

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because of course arrangements are no longer quite as easy to make

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to make as they are in person in the office, and that's another area where this course actually makes things easier for us.

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We've tried to make the course as clear and well structured as possible.

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We decided on a tab display as it comes very close to a homepage, or our homepage.

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We set a lot of texts using the text boxes activity

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and they can also easily and quickly be processed and edited by any member of staff even without an in-depth knowledge of Moodle.

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On the other hand, we tried to integrate services that we normally offer in the on-site Office for Student Affairs such as handing in certificates

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or registrations, whether for exams or thesis applications, performance level applications or certificates.

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We arranged all this using the activity Assignments.

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This means that the students enter a test or a document that they want to provide us with or that is to be processed,

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they enter it in a free text entry or simply upload a file.

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We receive it, can process it, can send it back,

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and so we can do all our documentation using Moodle.

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We used the activities, text inputs, assignments,

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we used the glossary function, the survey function, and we used the appointments function.

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We then used the Quiz function, so tests and the quiz function.

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We've got the functions link,

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folder, file, text box, I think it's called book function, text page, in there. So yes,

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I'd say we've certainly used half of the available activities.

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We've now also put all the forms we use

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online in various directories for the students to download.

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And, as Ms. Homann said earlier, the absolute advantage is really

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that we can exchange these files in the shortest time

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if there is an error or a change, and they’re almost instantly available again.

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On the other hand, we use an appointments function for our office hours or

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appointments outside office hours,

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through which students can ask for an appointment that we provide in advance in various offers.

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And the student can then choose the appointment that suits them,

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and we can edit the appointment at the end or even cancel it with a click if something comes up.

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. So all this very, very clear. We're also using the Survey function at the moment for our optional modules and for making the choice.

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Students are able to choose modules by priority.

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At the end of the choice, we receive an Excel list,or we can pull the choices from Moodle

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and then have the options for choosing, or the students' choices, clearly available.

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This is only a small insight into what we do, but there are still lots and lots of other options, and also with regard to our offer,

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we're not yet at the end of what we can do, we're going to continue to expand our offer.

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So of course, what has really proved its worth now is that all the submissions could indeed be made online in the Moodle course,

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and for instance that we could use the appointments feature that we have in Moodle to better coordinate the collection of certificates.

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So of course, there are students who really need their certificate now,

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and we don't want to have lots of people coming and going in the Office for Student Affairs. And we can manage this really well with the appointments feature,

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and ensure that we only have individual students coming in at specific times for their certificates.

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Of course, we had the advantage that we had already established our course at the department before corona so it wasn't entirely new for the students,

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so we actually only expanded the offers that we provided in Moodle

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and the students were already used to using Moodle and to its options for communicating with the office.

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And this allowed us to easily integrate new functions that we didn't have to advertise in a big way,

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or rather that only required a quick message to the effect that this can also be clarified online with us now. What really has proven its worth

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because it's much better for students to use in the application as it has better

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search functions is that the search terms are linked to our pages

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and the user instantly comes to these FAQs and can then use the specific terms that student might not be too familiar with especially in the beginning

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and instantly find the link in the FAQs. And this has meant that we, at least, have fewer enquiries now. Of course, we don't know for sure whether these two facts are connected, but there has certainly been a significant drop in enquiries.

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So these FAQs are in the glossary; the function is a tremendous relief for the students as well.

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Yes, so the students are very grateful and satisfied with this course.

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They make tremendous use of the offers, and as Ms. Rätz already mentioned earlier,

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also take up new offers straight away and use them to communicate with us

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and now, for instance, when choosing the modules simply mentioning that this is now available

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is enough for the students to use it. And there are only rarely

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problems with the use because the students are simply used to Moodle. They use Moodle in other courses, lectures,

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and of course it's an advantage for the students if we use Moodle and not just any entirely new platform. And

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perhaps, which of course is usually the question, how do you make this course known at the very beginning?

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But in fact, that also worked very well because we simply kept telling the students about the course from the beginning.

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So for any questions that were answered in the Moodle course or the material that was available there,

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we repeatedly referred to the course, and sent students the direct link to it, and told them, "You'll find it in the Moodle course, please go to the Moodle course".

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We did that consistently in the early days. And then at some point this course had become established,

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and we didn't have to push it in quite the same way,

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it worked very well. Well, the fact that the students had far fewer queries, that really is a phenomenon, which is totally brilliant, that they simply, well, that we've had a drop in enquiries along the lines

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of, "How does this work, how do I do that, where can I find the other?",

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that really has decreased significantly. And I don't think you can design a homepage so that you can offer it like that, so clearly,

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it just can't be done.

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I did an information event yesterday on Zoom, and we recorded it as well, and then were able to provide the link in Moodle,

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so it's really easy. And now students can watch the recording of the information event. Before that there was only the PowerPoint presentation.

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Well, we actually intended something entirely different at the beginning. We planned to offer the students an advisory facility,

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that was what we thought of at the beginning. And that didn't really work properly because we said

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that we'd almost be able to provide better advice in a telephone consultation.

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But then using this way of the consultation, we gradually found that we weren't able to represent what we wanted,

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but we are suddenly able to implement entirely different things.

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And then back in the beginning, there really was a lot that we didn't, well, we didn't really take seriously, but said, "Oh, we could do that!".

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And then all of a sudden: "Why don't we do this, or why don't we just try it, perhaps there is a way we can do it?".

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And then I did try lots of things, played around with them almost, and looked at how things could be implemented.

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And the possibilities are tremendous, the settings that you can select at the end,

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that the teacher or, accordingly, we as the Office for Student Affairs, what messages receive,

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whether we don't receive any notifications at all, or the students. For instance, we have now installed a function,

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we want them absolutely to read the information on choosing modules so they don't make any mistakes.

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In other words, we added this condition so we could say, "You have to read the information

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before we let you go any further and before you can choose the module".

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And we said, "But you can only choose the module once, and if you've already done it you can't go into these other module selection units".

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And these are the options that, of course, only open up over time,

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when you start looking around a little and just deal with all the settings

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behind the activities as well.

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So you need someone like Karen who enjoys dealing with this sort of thing (laughs). Who likes playing around with things, and testing them and trying them out. Because, as you've already said,

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it was actually made for teaching, and if you were to Google for a particular activity, well, you wouldn't find it like that,

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you'd just find other things. And you just have to feel like testing it,

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how can I do it differently? Yes. And we've even started doing some research, we used Google and looked around Germany to see if we could find any other universities

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that have an online or Moodle offer for their students in the Office for Student Affairs,

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and we didn't find anything. Well, there were two or three universities that we thought might have had something like it, where we found something, so we phoned them and asked them

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they had any plans. And they all said, "Yes, we tried it once, but we were unable to implement it, and Moodle

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can't do it the way that we need it". So we then just said, OK, if there's no expertise in the field yet

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yet then we'll just try it ourselves and see how far we get and what we do actually manage to achieve.

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And, well, yes, that's how our Moodle course came to be.