Sometimes paradise can be crowded, but you will always get paradise-like courses
In many courses of studies, you will still find the optimal mentoring relationships of the good old days. Many instructors actually know the names of all of their students, and their excellent instruction has been measured through teacher rankings and evaluation results. In a vote by the students, our instructors at the University Jena were ranked third out of all German universities with regard to the quality of teaching.
Despite all of the outstanding engagements of our instructors from all faculties, which have been proven in more than 1,500 evaluations, we must nonetheless state that our mentoring relations are not optimal in some other areas. The public funding for colleges has stayed at the same level for several years; however, there has been a drastic rise in numbers of current students. This means that in several courses of study, smaller classes cannot be organized. Furthermore, we want to improve our human resources without implementing funds from general student fees. This is a rather long-term effort; however, it needs to be resolved now for students who are forced to sit on the floor. We have therefore formulated an immediate program.
The call for 100 tutors
100 additional tutors won't only help ease our students who are attending class in full lecture halls, but it will also help bring a little bit of extra money into the pockets of the tutors. File an informal application together with your instructor in the office of the prorector at the Friedrich Schiller University. For the college of applied sciences, ask about this at your own prorector's office.
Lecture from the couch: digital teaching
We have begun to record courses and transfer them into digital format. Anyone who wants to can watch his 8am lecture from home on the sofa with potato chips in one hand and an arm around his girlfriend. Our goal is to have transferred all of the most crowded lectures very soon into a digital format. Write us if you want to see a specific lecture put very first on our list of priorities.
"That doesn't work" doesn't exist: Even better instruction
Already, a large portion of our courses are regularly being evaluated from you, our students. We want to continue these teaching evaluations on an ongoing basis, and even more, we want to see your critical review. The college of applied sciences has already been using its own evaluation system for the past two years, and it is working on further establishing the college's quality management system. The FSU is now following in these footsteps: very soon there will also be an evaluation system for the Friedrich Schiller University, which would make evaluations mandatory for our instructors. Then there will no longer only be participation from those, who are already great instructors. Also, the quality of our study programs, based on their applicability to future jobs, will likewise no longer be kept secret. We pledge to introduce the new system to you in early 2008. It would be laughable if we couldn't also bring the most absent-minded professor to unimagined brilliance.
Read further: Making your life easier: student services
