Information for professors and lecturers: Teaching in the winter semester 2021/22

2021-10-13 As you know, for the coming academic year we are striving as far as possible to hold our courses again in presence and to make the best possible use of our campus. Against the background of Leuphana's self-image as an on-campus university, this follows the goal that we can meet face-to-face in studying, teaching, research and work.

First of all, we would like to thank you once again expressly and very sincerely for your special commitment in the past semesters. We know that your great commitment was not self-evident in a time of crisis, but very essential in the sense of a good education for our students. We would especially like to thank you for the development of diverse concepts for digital courses and the application of the necessary tools. In the coming months, we would like to use all the experience we have gained in order to be able to use and further develop innovative digital teaching formats even after the return to classroom teaching. Digital teaching formats cannot and should not replace face-to-face teaching on campus, but rather complement it in a meaningful way without restricting the personal encounters and interaction on campus that are so important for Leuphana.

In view of the legal framework conditions, face-to-face teaching in the upcoming winter semester will take place in the so-called "3G mode". We have made the necessary decisions after extensive consultation processes and after intensive consideration of the many wishes for presence and university life, the requirements for secure university operations, but also the additional burdens and restrictions that presence in 3G mode entails.

We want to implement this path together with you and in mutual trust. In doing so, we need to know that there are university members who prefer the most complete security possible, as well as university members who prefer a simpler and possibly less burdensome, but more risky path. Against this background, we are concerned with a good balancing of sometimes conflicting interests and with seeking and finding a pragmatic university operation in presence that is supported by as many people as possible - even under conditions that may still change in the course of the semester. In doing so, we realize that the return to presence under the conditions of a pandemic that has not yet fully come to an end is in some respects more complex than the conversion to online teaching at the beginning of the pandemic. We hope that many things will settle in and that all the usual freedoms of teaching will be fully possible again starting in the spring.

Against this background, we greatly appreciate your willingness to once again adapt to changed conditions in the coming winter semester - and, if necessary, to again accept additional efforts in order to enable our students to study well. This is a good basis for the further development of the university, and for this we thank you very much.

With this in mind, please understand and take note of the following detailed organizational instructions for conducting your courses in the coming winter semester:

  1. TEACHING AND EXAMINATIONS IN PRESENCE
    In principle, all courses in the winter semester 2021/22 will take place in presence on the campus of the university in a regular mode, i.e. usually as a weekly course or - with the approval of the responsible dean of studies - as a block course. This means that you, as a teacher, generally teach in presence on campus as usual. The same applies to examinations.

    Teachers who cannot be vaccinated against the coronavirus for proven medical reasons or who belong to a group of people for whom the RKI does not (yet) recommend vaccination or has only recently recommended vaccination - and who therefore do not want to expose themselves to contact with persons who may be infectious despite vaccination or negative tests despite the 3G rule - or teachers who reside or regularly stay abroad and who can credibly demonstrate that they are unable to travel to Germany due to the pandemic, can carry out their teaching on the basis of the Corona Annexes to the Framework Examination Regulations in accordance with the alternative implementation method already stored in mystudy. In this case, we ask you to obtain the approval of the Dean of Studies responsible for you and to document the above-mentioned requirements to the Dean of Studies.

    Of course, you are free to continue using digital tools and platforms in the face-to-face courses to enhance the didactic quality, as long as they do not replace but complement the face-to-face teaching. The same applies to digitally provided formats and materials (e.g. videos) for self-learning times, e.g. in the sense of a flipped classroom approach. All initiatives, concepts and concrete applications of digital tools developed in the last semesters are very welcome by us as the Presidential Board in the sense of an innovative further development of teaching.
     
  2. 3G MODE FOR LECTURERS
    Due to legal requirements and health protection, a 3G mode will apply in principle within all buildings of Leuphana University Lüneburg in the winter semester 2021/22 in consideration of the various concerns and legal interests. For teachers, access to and stay in buildings is thus only possible if they are fully vaccinated, recovered or tested on a daily basis (antigen test: valid for 24 hours, PCR test: valid for 48 hours). Proof is provided for all employees and teachers via an official declaration as a self-declaration, which must be signed by you personally. A co-signature of superiors is not necessary. Detailed information and the form provided for this purpose can be found at https://www.leuphana.de/portale/coronavirus/beschaeftigte.html.
     
  3. 3G MODE FOR STUDENTS
    In the winter semester, the 3G mode for access and stay within all buildings of Leuphana University of Lüneburg also applies to students; access to and stay in buildings are thus also only possible for students if they are fully vaccinated, recovered or tested on a daily basis (antigen test: valid for 24 hours, PCR test: valid for 48 hours). Students must be able to provide proof that they have been vaccinated, recovered, or tested daily (antigen test: valid for 24 hours, PCR test: valid for 48 hours) prior to the start of classes as well as at selected locations (e.g., the library). A coronary test must be confirmed by a recognized testing center; self-tests are not acceptable. In order to provide transitional support, especially for younger students whose complete vaccination has not yet been completed due to the late vaccination recommendation for 12 to 17 year olds, Leuphana will cover the cost of coronatests for its students at the testing center on campus (in the cafeteria of the Central Building) during commencement week and the first week of the semester (October 11-22).
     
  4. ADMISSION CONTROLS IN LECTURE HALLS
    For all courses with large numbers of students that take place in the auditorium (possibly in conjunction with the forum) or in lecture halls 1-4, 3G control at the entrance should be carried out by an external service provider. Containers will be set up for this purpose in the access area to the lecture halls; the controls for the auditorium will be located in the foyer of the central building. All checks will be conducted digitally using the “Cov Pass Check” app developed to check European Corona certificates. Students are requested to arrive at least 15, better 30 minutes before the start of the event if possible to avoid delays due to the checks; they will need a vaccination, convalescent or test certificate with a digital or printed QR code and an ID document for access. All faculty will need their official declaration and also an ID document for admission control.
     
  5. ADMISSION CONTROLS IN SEMINAR ROOMS
    For all courses that take place in course rooms other than the auditorium or lecture halls 1-4, we rely on your assistance for 3G control, as do other universities, due to the large number of approximately 2000 courses that take place in about 140 course rooms in over 20 different buildings. Unfortunately, for logistical and construction reasons, no other viable solution can be implemented on our campus, as we cannot and do not want to cordon off the campus as a whole. In this context, we would like to thank you expressly and sincerely for your support and understanding. Of course we know: As faculty, you want to teach and not control admissions. We would not address you with the following instructions and obligations if we saw other practicable organizational possibilities.
     
  6. CONDUCT OF 3G CHECKS BY INSTRUCTORS
    As far as you do not teach in the large lecture halls and no external staff can carry out the admission checks, this basically means that you as teachers are asked to determine the 3G status of the students appropriately before the start of the course.

    In the case that there is no warning level for the district of Lüneburg according to the Lower Saxony Corona Ordinance and the weekly incidence per 100,000 inhabitants is below 50, a check of the 3G status of the students is not obligatory. This case is currently applicable. In this case, we only ask you to conduct random checks of 3G detection and student identity. However, all students have the right to request that you as instructors conduct a 3G check, in which case you are asked to conduct a full check to meet the students' need for security. To the extent that students do not require you as instructors to conduct a 3G check, you are thus not currently required to conduct a full 3G check.

    In the event that either warning level 1 according to the Lower Saxony Corona Ordinance or a weekly incidence per 100,000 inhabitants of more than 50 would be determined for the district of Lüneburg, a control of the 3G status of the students would become mandatory and completely necessary. In this case, the implementation of random checks would no longer be sufficient according to the Lower Saxony Corona Ordinance. Fortunately, this case is currently not applicable.

    We ask you to pay attention to the required confidentiality during the 3G control. If necessary, you are welcome to use the (voluntary) support of staff members of your professorship or faculty or student assistants of your course for the check, if available.

    For the execution of the checks we give the following further organizational hints:
    a) If possible, please use the "CovPass Check" app of the Robert Koch Institute, which you can download to your smartphone via the App Store, for the check. With the "Cov Pass Check" app, digital Covid vaccination certificates as well as recovery certificates and test certificates can be scanned via QR code and their validity checked. The digital certificates are scanned using the camera in the user's device. The app checks and confirms the validity of the respective certificate, works offline and ensures a quick and easy check. No data is stored or forwarded to other devices.
    b) Please make sure that you use the "CovPass Check" app for digital verification of the certificates and not the "CovPass" app, which allows users to digitally store their vaccination, convalescence or test certificates and show them paperlessly. These are two different apps.
    c) If you cannot or do not want to use the digital check option via the CovPass check app, you can of course also check students' certificates in analog form.
    d) Students can provide their proofs digitally via the “Corona Warning” app or the “CovPass” app as well as analog via a paper printout.
    e) Students who show up late must also provide proof and be checked.
    f) Students who are unable to provide 3G proof will not be allowed to enter classrooms. If a person resists the control or cannot provide a valid 3G certificate, you as a teacher are authorized and obliged to make use of the domiciliary rights and to exclude the person concerned from the course and to expel him/her from the room.
     
  7. DISTANCE RULES, MASK OBLIGATION AND VENTILATION
    Based on available room capacity and room sizes, Leuphana's lecture rooms will return to regular capacity and seating for the winter semester. However, whenever possible, a minimum distance of 1.5 meters shall continue to be maintained; please ask your students to do so whenever necessary.

    In general, students are still required to wear a medical mask in all University buildings. The mask may be removed at a seat in classes, provided a minimum distance of 1.5 meters from others can be maintained. Instructors may also remove the mask in the course of their professional duties, provided that a minimum distance of 1.5 meters from other persons can be maintained.

    If your lecture room does not have a ventilation system, please ensure that you regularly ventilate the room at 20-minute intervals for a period of at least 3 to 10 minutes by fully opening the windows. Feel free to ask students for assistance here. Alternatively, you can ventilate the room continuously by opening one-third of the window area. Ventilation systems are operated at full capacity by our facility management, and additional ventilation is generally not necessary in these rooms.
     
  8. CONTACT TRACING
    The university is required to provide contact tracing of all participants in (teaching) events in the event of an infection for quick and accurate assistance to health departments. In the winter semester, unlike in previous semesters, contact tracking will no longer be done via myStudy, but via a QR code-based system originally developed at Ostfalia University in Lower Saxony and adapted to Leuphana's needs. For the use of this system we give you the following organizational hints:
    a) All participants in courses (both students and teachers) are required to register with their contact details or to register before the start of the course. Please ensure by appropriate information that the students actually register or point out this registration obligation to the students.
    b) For registration, you will find a QR code at the entrances of all seminar rooms and lecture halls. All participants in events are required to scan this QR code with their cell phone, tablet or notebook camera before the start of their first event in order to access a mobile website where a one-time entry of personal contact information is made. Subsequently, registration in further rooms is usually possible directly and without the renewed collection of contact data, as this information is stored in a cookie and reused.
    c) On each subsequent visit to the room, scanning the QR code leads directly to registration in the respective room ("Come").
    d) When leaving the room, students must scan the code again to log out. If the website is still open on the mobile device, direct logout is also possible ("Leaving").
    e) Logging in and out is also possible directly via the website https://qr.leuphana.de with the PIN displayed in the room.
    f) All data will be processed on Leuphana servers in accordance with data protection regulations and deleted after the period required by the health authorities.
    g) If participants are unable to register and deregister digitally via a smartphone or laptop, contact tracking forms are available in the seminar rooms; these can also be downloaded at https://www.leuphana.de/portale/coronavirus/studierende.html.
    However, registration via QR code is always preferable, as contact tracking is much easier this way than via the analog forms, if required.
    Please take the completed forms after each course and keep them confidential for a period of three weeks for the purpose of tracking possible chains of infection. Please destroy the forms afterwards in accordance with data protection regulations.
    h) Instructions for using contact tracking can also be found here: https://anleitungen.leuphana.de/doku.php/kontaktverfolgung
     
  9. CONDUCT OF LARGE TEACHING EVENTS.
    After intensive consideration, the Presidential Board has decided that courses in the large lecture halls (Auditorium, Lecture Halls 1-4) will be held in presence and in principle without limitation of the number of participants, but that these courses should also be broadcast online.

    This decision is based on the following considerations: On the one hand, students as well as lecturers express the wish for courses in presence as well as the wish for courses in security. On the other hand, holding the large courses online would lead to a logistical problem for those students who have to attend courses in presence afterwards. Therefore, the lectures in the large lecture halls should be held in presence, but should also be transmitted online, in order to enable both those students who do not feel safe in large lecture halls with many fellow students and at the same time those students who subsequently attend another course in presence to study. In this way, we expect to be able to achieve a division of participation numbers between on-campus presence and online at home, so that a secure presence operation and at the same time a stable online operation can be achieved without bottlenecks in workstations and WLAN connections on campus.

    In order for students to be able to participate in the major courses online from home or, if necessary, in learning groups close to campus, please create your course as before via myStudy as a meeting in Zoom and conduct the course hybrid in the lecture hall booked for you. For more information, please visit the University's Corona Portal on the faculty information pages at https://www.leuphana.de/portale/coronavirus.html.

    To further increase the level of safety in the lecture halls, we will be dividing the seating in our lecture halls into zones so that any remaining infection risks can be mitigated. The zones each have separate QR codes for contact tracking, so that in the event of infection, contact tracking can be simplified and the risk of quarantine measures can be reduced.
     
  10. ALTERNATIVES FOR STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN PRESENCE.
    Students who a) cannot be vaccinated against coronavirus for proven medical reasons or b) belong to a group of people for whom the RKI does not (yet) recommend vaccination or has recently recommended vaccination - and therefore do not want to expose themselves to contact with persons who may be infectious despite vaccination or negative tests, despite the 3G rule - or c) students who reside or regularly stay abroad and who credibly claim that they cannot travel to Germany due to the pandemic are requested to contact their teachers in order to find an individual solution and, in individual cases, to reach an agreement on how they can alternatively acquire the content of their course. An appropriate solution can be, for example, individual support by you as a teacher (e.g. literature study with individual feedback possibilities, Moodle assignments, reading logs in connection with office hours or similar). The prerequisite is that students credibly demonstrate the above-mentioned requirements to you as the instructor, in the case of medical reasons by submitting a medical certificate.

    If you have any questions regarding this procedure, please contact the dean's office responsible for you. We are aware that this procedure, which we have intensively weighed up against other possible alternatives, may also result in additional burdens for you as a teacher. We would therefore like to thank you very much for your commitment and understanding in this regard as well.
     
  11. WORKPLACES FOR STUDENTS
    Workstations are generally available for students on campus at various locations, including the reading room and library foyer, unused seminar rooms, the Central Building, Building 14, and the dining hall. Students are also required to sign in with their contact information at these locations to ensure contact tracking in the event of infection.
     
  12. WIFI COVERAGE
    Due to the large increase in the use of video conferencing and the remaining percentage of classes conducted online, we anticipate a very large increase in the use of the University's wifi network during the winter semester. Unfortunately, it can be assumed that the supply of rooms with WLAN will not be sufficient for the expected demand and that there may be restrictions, at least during peak loads. We therefore ask university members to resort to using the wired LAN connections in your offices whenever possible.
     
  13. FURTHER INFORMATION
    For more information, please visit https://www.leuphana.de/portale/coronavirus.html.
    In addition, if you have any further questions or comments, please continue to contact us at cv-info@leuphana.de.

We all recognize the sensitivity that a return to face-to-face operations on campus requires. Against this background, we would like to thank you all for your ongoing commitment to teaching at Leuphana and for your continued understanding of the often difficult individual challenges. Together with you, we are at the same time looking forward to a content-rich winter semester at Leuphana - again in presence, again with personal encounters, again with ideas and exchange on site, again on a lively and vibrant campus.