01 Apr

The effects of Corona on your studies

Here you will find a summary of all short and long term changes and new regulations for examinations, deadlines and study organisation.

Written examinations

Since 19.03.2020 there are no more written presence examinations. This means that you don’t have to cancel your registration for any exams you might have. Exam registrations are automatically cancelled. Of course, a cancelled exam is not counted as a missed/failed exam attempt. If the exams you had planned to take were retries with a yearly deadline, the deadline will be extended until 31.03.2021. This applies to exams whose annual deadline ends on 31.03.2020 as well as to exams which are scheduled to be held on 31.09.2020. For all exams which are still taking place (e.g. written homework) or which are only postponed and have NOT been cancelled completely, the following applies: You can cancel your registration without giving reasons by the day of the exam at the latest (but in good time before the exam starts). You have to write an email to your responsible exam team and the examiner. If you cancel or withdraw from an exam, the attempt that was not taken or aborted does not count. This information is important, because if you fail a retry you will be automatically deregistered from your current attempt, but not from the whole exam procedure itself. If a test you have registered for is only postponed and then possibly takes place in a different form (you would then receive an email from the TU), you are obliged to participate, unless you cancel it. Only those written exams that are really completely cancelled and completely rescheduled in the new semester will be cancelled automatically and you don’t have to do anything extra so that the current attempt is not valid. But even then you will still be in the examination process and have to take the exam within the new deadline (31.03.2021). You are not cancelled from the exam itself, only from the attempt. Please note this small but important difference! 
If you have almost finished your studies and only one last already registered exam is missing, then the following applies: If the registered examination has been postponed or cancelled, re-registration for the summer semester is possible but not necessary. In principle, you could still end the examination without re-registration. 
 

Inspection dates and notification

Inspection dates for the examination documents will be suspended until after the date of resumption of regular study activities and will not take place. The one-year period for taking legal action against the result of an examination begins from the date of resumption of normal study activities. The same applies to the three-month period for counterclaim or applications for cancellation. Notifications are currently not sent out: 1) because no new examinations are being conducted, or 2) because in the case of examinations that have already been conducted and in which someone has failed, the notifications are also only sent after resumption of normal operations. This means that the deadlines also only apply after receipt of the notification. If you failed an exam at the beginning of the year and then even received a notice of exmatriculation or even an exma notice shortly before emergency operation started, please contact us by email. Here, goodwill is granted and the deadlines are extended, but you have to apply for this individually by mail to the TU. 
 

Homework

The deadlines for term papers or final theses will be suspended until the resumption of regular study activities – at least until 11.05.2020. Only after this date will your deadlines for completing the work continue to run normally. This means that if you had exactly 4 weeks left before the start of the emergency operation, these 4 weeks will be frozen and will only continue when the normal study operation has been resumed. The goal is that you can use the full time given for processing without being in emergency mode. 

If you would like to withdraw from your homework due to the situation, you can do this by sending an email to the examiner and your examination team, without being charged for a failed attempt. However, you will have to find a new topic when you start your work again. 
 

Online exams

At the moment, the TU is in the process of trying out, testing and setting up possible forms of online exams in consultation with individual departments. Check your emails regularly to see if there are such examination offers for your subject area. You will be informed by email if an exam you had already registered for will possibly take place online. If an exam that you have registered for is only postponed and then takes place in a different form, you will NOT automatically be completely deregistered. You will remain registered and should then actually take part in the same way as in your originally planned exam. The automatic cancellation mentioned above with a new deadline of 31.03.2021 will only happen if the exams are cancelled completely and then take place again. If you don’t want to take part in such a form-modified exam, you have to cancel your registration by mail before the exam date, otherwise you will stay registered and fail because you missed the exam! 

If you find an online exam you want to take but did not register for originally, you can register for that exam by filling out the registration form. You can find this form under the direct access 186789 and you have to send it from your TU-email account (important!) to your responsible examination team. 
 

Optional and additional modules

As the TU is closed to the general public at the moment and you want to register for exams in the elective or additional areas, you have to send an email to your exam team. This team will also take care of the forwarding of the yellow slips to the examiners. Check your QISPOS/SAP account regularly to check the status of your registration. Only when this is done are you officially registered for the exams. The next weeks will decide when and how the teaching and the exams will take place.
 

Registration and submission of final theses

If you would like to register your dissertations, please contact your examination team by email.

You can hand in your finished thesis either by post or by email. If you want to submit your thesis by mail, the postmark of the TU Berlin is important for the submission in time and not the date of receipt. This means, for example, that if you have to hand in your thesis on 31.03.20 and you put your thesis in the mailbox in time before the last emptying of the mailbox on that day, you have done everything right. But please take a person with you to the mailbox who can testify to the delivery to the mailbox in case of doubt, or take a photo of your delivery as proof. 

You can also hand in your thesis digitally via the contact form of the examination office. For this you have to send your thesis as a PDF file. Additionally, you have to attach the scanned registration form (important!). Since the Examinations Office forwards the attachments to the examiners without inspection, you must also provide the following data:

  • Your name
  • Matriculation number
  • Degree and course of study
  • Names of the examiners
  • Email addresses of the examiners
  • Topic of the submitted work

The name of the file for your thesis should be as follows:   thesis_matriculation_number.pdf

The following also applies to final theses (as with term papers): The deadlines for submission of final theses will be suspended from 12.3.2020 until the resumption of regular study operations (but at least until 11 May 2020), i.e. put on hold, and will only continue to run after this date. They are therefore automatically extended by the time of emergency operation. 

Certificates

Your certificates cannot be sent to you at the moment. However, if you urgently need a confirmation of your degree, you can contact your local exam team. 
If you urgently need some kind of proof (e.g. for an ongoing court case), you can get it. Even in emergency situations there are staff members in the local administration. Write an email to the responsible office and make it very clear in the subject line why you need it very urgently. The home office staff will forward such mails to the individuals on site and they will take care of it. If that does not work, mail us. 

Expiring study and examination regulations

If your examination and study regulations (StuPo) expire on 31.03.2020 or on 30.09.2020, you have the possibility to complete your studies according to these StuPo until 31.03.2021.

If you have already been granted an extension for your expiring diploma course which expires on 31.03.2020, the extension for the summer semester 2020 will also apply. But remember that you have to pay the semester fees for this extension and re-register!   

If your course of study expires on 30.09.2020, you can use the Corona crisis as the main reason for a hardship claim. This is especially possible if the TU simply did not make it possible for you to make up for everything that failed in time. Please come to us for a consultation. It’s possible that we will find further reasons to strengthen the application. The examination board will then examine your application, and the TU has encouraged everyone to be especially fair.

TAN not available

If you do not currently have access to your TAN list, you can request a one-time password via video chat for identification (WEBIDENT procedure) as follows. 

1. You need a PC, smartphone or tablet with a camera
2. You need a fast internet connection
3. Check whether your device is compatible for the procedure on the following website: https://check-webident.tubit.tu-berlin.de/
4. Call the IT hotline +49 30 31428000 during their opening hours (Monday to Friday 10:00 – 16:00 o’clock)
5. A ZECM staff member* then starts the video session
6. To verify your identity, your identity card or passport must be pointed into the camera so that security features can be checked
7. At the end you will receive a one-time password via the chat, which allows you to perform the following actions:
                a) Reset the password
                b) The generation of a new TAN list
 

Information about the Semesterticket can also be found at the Semesterticket Office of the AStA!
 

Online study

The TU is currently in the process of finding ways to maintain teaching operations in the coming semester in the best possible digital form. Above all, compulsory courses should all take place in some form or other. However, everything is still in the process and we are involved in many discussions. There will probably be many video lectures that you can use in a time-flexible way. Also, lectures are planned as live video conferences for those seminars that rely on discussion and active conversations. The aim is to preserve the respective teaching form and character of the seminars and lectures. The details are not yet known and, it is too early to publish anything detailed here. 

To access digital content such as lectures, you will need a PC, a smartphone or a tablet and an internet connection. The university knows this and there are discussions here how to solve this. Tools and licenses are currently being checked, bought and extended. Everything necessary should be made available to students free of charge. For example, there is also a laptop rental service in the room that is to be set up. This is based on demand and will not be increased pro forma. This means that if you want to make use of it, please contact the general student advisory service of the TU. They will collect the demand and pass it on to the appropriate department that is currently planning to set up such a pool. We will stay tuned here. 
 

Regular updates

Since the situation is still confusing and can change very quickly, we will regularly inform you here about new regulations and changes. At the moment you can reach us via email hochschulberatung@asta.tu-berlin.de or during our office hours via Jitsi https://conference.astatu.berlin/Hochschulberatung (and soon also via service mobile phones). 

Please make use of the AStA’s counselling services and write to us (and also to the other AStA counsellors e.g. BAföG). We are there for you even in these challenging times. 

Sincerely,
Your university and student advisory service