News articles

Coronavirus – Update: Information regarding the start of winter term 2020 at TU Wien

A summary of the most important information for the coming winter semester.

Coronavirus – Update 25.09.2020

Teaching at TU Wien will continue to be strongly influenced by the Covid-19 measures for the winter semester 2020. The “Guide for Digital Teaching and Learning”, opens an external URL in a new window should help you to cope with this task.

In addition, we would like to draw your attention to a few points:

Reporting a COVID-19 suspected case or illness in students:

If students experience symptoms, or for other reasons suspect that they may have contracted COVID-19, please contact 1450. If you feel ill or suspect that you are ill, you should stay at home and report your possible illness using the “COVID-19 Suspected Case Report Form”, opens an external URL in a new window. All information must be completed in full. Filling out and sending the contact form triggers the tracking and notification of identified contact persons on both the student and teacher side.

Reporting a COVID-19 suspected case or illness of a teacher:

Details can be found at www.tuwien.at/en/tu-wien/corona/employees, opens an external URL in a new window

Contact person tracking management:

In order to be able to perform contact tracing for suspected cases, presences on the TU Wien campus must be registered. This is done via the newly established access management system using QR Code For courses, the creation of a seating plan is also planned. Suggestions for the collection of the seating plan can be found at colab.tuwien.ac.at/x/1Q3FAQ, opens an external URL in a new window.

Cleaning of the lecture rooms:

The cleaning of the lecture rooms is always - with few exceptions - done by the cleaning staff of TUW. The prerequisite for this is that a cleaning appointment in TISS is booked at least three weeks before the start of the course. Therefore, please make sure that a cleaning appointment of at least 60 minutes has been booked in the classrooms before all attendance appointments. If the changeover time in the hourly grid has not been observed, the cleaning time must be at least 90 minutes.

Cohort regulation:

The lecture halls and seminar rooms can only be occupied with a maximum of 50% capacity as described in the “Guide for Digital Teaching and Learning”, opens an external URL in a new window. Therefore, a cohort regulation is usually necessary, especially for first-semester courses. We recommend that two attendance groups, alternating weekly, and a pure online group be provided.
Please make sure that for all courses you want to run in hybrid mode with alternating presences, the groups have the designations for even and odd calendar weeks and - if possible - a distance learning group is also available. And please note: the group size must not exceed the current capacity of the booked classroom.

Room information - Current capacities:

Information on the currently available capacities (currently yellow marked places under the title "Capacity Winter Semester 2020"), the respective equipment as well as room plans (will be updated continuously) can be found in coLAB, opens an external URL in a new window.

Traffic light red = Distance Learning:

Basically the following applies for the winter semester 2020: As far as possible, courses should be held in the form of Distance Learning. If you have planned a classroom-based or hybrid course, please bear in mind when designing your teaching that it is quite possible that the traffic light could turn red - and this means that the entire teaching will then have to be switched to Distance Learning. You should also try to focus on those persons who cannot be present at TU Wien, because they are either among the particularly vulnerable persons or other circumstances prevent them from participating in teaching as much as possible.  A general explanation of the implementation of the traffic light at the TUW has been added to the “Guide for Digital Teaching and Learning”, opens an external URL in a new window.

To support you in this, the LVA "Digital Competencies in Teaching for Tutors", opens an external URL in a new window will take place from September 30th. Part of the service provided for this course is to actively participate in the design or implementation of a course. We therefore invite you to recommend this course to tutors or students who are to support you in designing, implementing or converting your course.

Mandatory masks for students:

Students have to wear a mouth and nose protection from the time they enter a TU building until they leave. This must also be worn during the course.

Masks are compulsory for teachers:

Lecturers must wear a mask from the time they enter a TU building until they leave. This protection must also be worn during the course if a distance of 2 m from the students cannot be maintained.

Orientation guide for students:

An “Orientation Guide for Students”, opens an external URL in a new window was published on 21.9.2020.

We wish you a successful start to the semester and thank you for your commitment under these difficult conditions!