Thomas Heinze works in Student Services and has been in charge of the BTU hotline for students during the Corona period since March 2020. It was important to him to continue to be there for students during this difficult time.

"I can still vividly remember what it was like when the BTU suddenly switched to online operations. During the peak periods, the hotline sometimes reached us with 300 calls a day within business hours. Of course, this pushed my abilities hard to the limits and sometimes far beyond. Many of our students just needed a little orientation to find their way under the changed circumstances. There were a lot of questions about how to deal with exam dates, events and what the prevailing conditions were for attendance. However, this was more noticeable in the first year of the pandemic. Currently, in the second year, most people have already adjusted.

My impression is that many of our students have been able to come to terms with the isolated learning and studying. For the practical parts of the studies, such as a laboratory internship or working in the studio, it was no longer so easy. That's why, in my view, it was the right step to open up the campus to students again. Despite all the caution, it is nice to see the campus finally filled with life again and to live teaching as what it is. A transfer of knowledge from person to person.

We at Student Services, like many others, were forced to rethink our entire processes and workflows with the advent of the pandemic. Many contacts that had previously taken place in person now had to take place digitally/virtually. In this respect, there was initially no longer a typical routine. Therefore, I can say that the typical working day has changed from personal office hours to digital accessibility. Thousands of e-mails and just as many calls had to be "handled". It sounds like I'm exaggerating with the numbers, but it's true. Just managing the requests and streams of data for our freshmen is a huge challenge. But, thank goodness, I'm not alone in that.

A certain pressure to change to a digital workplace and paperless office was also noticeable and necessary long before the pandemic. However, the new situation acted like a burning glass right there, massively increasing the need for action and mercilessly exposing weaknesses. This is exactly where we started, in collaboration with many colleagues from other departments, and made the appropriate adjustments. Specifically, the new myBTU portal was introduced. Among other things, this enabled me to create student IDs for our first-year students much more efficiently. Conversely, our students can also submit applications online there, completely independent of our service hours.

I think the changes that have already been implemented are wonderful. It makes us as a university much more flexible in responding to changing requirements and also places us in a completely new light as a place to study. But we should definitely not stand still at this point, but use the situation as an opportunity to develop even further."

Do you have questions or problems with your studies? The Corona hotline for students is still available for you:

T +49(0)355 69 1302
krisenstab+studium(at)b-tu.de