A boost for digital innovation
The first digital semester at Berlin’s Humboldt-Universität
Malte Dreyer, head of HU’s computer and media service (CMS). Credit: © WISTA Management GmbH
Thorsten Rohwedder in front of the HU Mathematics building in Adlershof. Credit: © WISTA Management GmbH
All lectures with compulsory attendance have been cancelled, the libraries are closed, and most employees are working from home: on 13 March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic forced Humboldt-University into emergency operations. Since then, a skeleton crew of IT and administrative staff has been digitally retrofitting the university and finding solutions for an array of problems. On 20 April 2020, the faculty celebrated a seminal premiere: the start of the first digital semester in Berlin’s university history. Need is the mother of invention…
An incident in Berlin in late-March showed what happens when too many people try to access a website: the servers of Investitionsbank Berlin crashed after being flooded by thousands of applicants hoping for coronavirus emergency grants. The website was temporarily unavailable, leaving many baffled. Saving the staff and students of HU such a worst-case scenario is the task of Malte Dreyer and his team. As head of HU’s computer and media service (CMS), he was responsible for making the transition to fully functioning digital operations on the double. ‘That was our task as the central IT service provider: everyone had to be able to work from home as soon as possible.’
Not an easy feat. They had to find digital workarounds for an array of analogue processes, while, in turn, safeguarding the system’s performance capacity and data security. ‘For one, we massively increased capacities for audio and video conferencing,’ says the IT expert. Thanks to Dreyer and his team, lecturers could now record their presentations at home, or give webinars or host digital conferences in real-time. The software they were provided also enabled students to ask questions in a chat window as well as completing surveys and tests online.
The CMS team also prepared a streaming platform for university teachers and students, which was also aimed at strengthening media-driven teaching in the long term. Teachers can now get to know a range of software products and obtain manuals on how to, say, display formulas during a webinar. ‘We provide a wide range of tools covering many scenarios because the requirements of our teachers are very different,’ says Dreyer. Unfortunately, however, Thorsten Rohwedder, a mathematics professor, says that there is no way to avoid considerable extra work. ‘Making myself familiar with the technology means extra work to preparing the lecture itself.’
The university professor’s original plan was to return to his office in Adlershof on April 1st after his parental leave, but the coronavirus directives turned everything upside down. Rohwedder now teaches from a desk in his bedroom and is slowly getting used to producing teaching videos. ‘As a father of two children with a three-room flat, I cannot guarantee that I can give a lecture at the same time each week, live, and without interruption,’ he says. Possible pitfalls of technology made him opt for recording over streaming. ‘You need a decent broadband connection for streaming – with our internet in Friedrichshain, that would’ve been a bit tricky.’
Despite the obvious difficulties and the added workload, many HU employees view the current situation with optimism. ‘After this semester, our online teaching skills will have improved considerably,’ says Thorsten Rohwedder. There are many new approaches to a more modern way of teaching and the pandemic seems to be giving them an unexpected boost. Malte Dreyer, too, is convinced that this crisis-driven digitisation marathon will pay off in the long run. ‘The technologies were deploying now will continue to be effective and usable beyond the pandemic. We will have to fine tune many things, but we have pushed things forward that might have taken years under normal circumstances.’
By Nora Lessing for Adlershof Journal