Registration procedure for courses

Since the summer term of 2013 the English Language and Linguistics section has implemented a unique registration procedure for all its courses. Reasons were the high demand for courses, dissatisfaction with the previous procedure both on the student and on the faculty side as well as the unsatisfactory situation of many courses having to deal with frequent course switching and dropping in the first weeks of the semester.
 
The current procedure is intended to ensure that students can actually take the modules they ought to in their current semester as described in the curriculum plan. Other goals are to spread the students more equally among the courses offered, allowing for more reliable and more didactically suited planning of course sessions. The procedure also gets rid of the formerly common situation of students bouncing between different courses in the first few weeks of the semester, severely impeding proper teaching.


Here are the most relevant points for students:

1. Registration for courses is carried out via the LSF. The registration period is roguhly a month long and ends two weeks before the start of the new semester. The actual time of registration within this period is unimportant. Registrations outside of this period are only possible for courses which specifically state so in their course descriptions.

2. The allocation of students to courses is based on the curriculum: Students in a semester in which they should normally study the module in questions, as well as students in respectively higher semesters, are given preference.

3. If there are parallel modules or courses (e.g. three different Intermediate seminars), the students are distributed equally among the courses offered.

4. If the demand exceeds the available number of places, all student without a place will be put on a waiting list, which is ordered as follows: First, all students in a semester in which they should regularly study the seminars but did not get a place yet, followed by those who still have one or two semesters ahead of them to fulfill their course requirements. Within both groups, allocation is performed randomly. 

5. The final allocation always takes place in the first session of the course. Students who have been admitted, yet do not show up for the first session, are dropped from the course and replaced with students from the waiting list. Accepting a place in the first session is binding, as dropping the class at a later time could not be compensated by students from the waiting list. It is therefore a question of fairness to other students to actually take advantage of seminar places accepted in the first session.