Improvement management of future events

O-Week in Bamberg

First a short presentation about the orientation week for first semester students in Bamberg

• Before the O-Week: room applications, finding tutors and assigning them to groups, drawing up contracts for tutors as 14h are remunerated
  • Problems finding enough tutors. In addition, too few tutors from the student body, which leads to few new members
• During the O-week: Starts on Tuesday and ends on Friday
  • Tuesday: Welcome by the dean
  • Wednesday and Thursday: tutorials, library, campus and city tours, pub crawl
  • Friday: Tutorials if required, welcome by the President and Chancellor, distribution of first-year bags
• Problem after the O-week: first-semester students confused as some do not take part in tutorials (e.g. creating a study plan)

Exchange about the O-weeks

Participants should report their experiences on the following three questions

Who are your tutors/mentors?

Explanation of the term tutor in the O-week, as a group leader/ mentor

• Tutors are often not members of the student bodies
  • Tutors from outside are only responsible for the "fun" activities
  • First-year students liked their own O-Week so much that they want to become tutors themselves
    • Too many applications so that not all can be accepted
• The term tutor is sometimes not used

How does the O-Week generally work for you?

• Some universities pay the tutors, while at others they even have to pay extra
• The duration varies from four days to two weeks
• Division into smaller groups
• Planning is often difficult as the exact number of participants is not known in advance
  • In some cases, information about the number of first-semester students is provided too early, sometimes only on the first day of the O-week
  • Too few tutors and therefore groups too large
  • Possibility of closing enrolment earlier
• Focus on group cohesion and fun, especially at the beginning, to allay the fears of first-year students
• Campus rally instead of campus tour to make it more interesting. Organise games that are fun for everyone, even if they don't drink alcohol (e.g. tug of war).
• Generally a mixture of content relating to the degree programme and getting to know each other and celebrating
• Communication (also in advance) via Whatsapp groups
  • The problem is too many messages, some of which are inappropriate
• Distribute points to the individual groups and hold an award ceremony at the end

Does the O-Week attract new student representatives?

• For some it worked very well and for others almost not at all
• Problem that many tutors are not members of the student body themselves
  • Interest of first-year students is not really aroused