DAAD Master's degrees

[AllThose299s]

From what I know, Germany is very "old school" and normally doesn't do online courses, however I took a short course via DAAD last summer at the Bauhaus Summer School which was fully online. It felt intense because I was in the earliest time zone, and I thought it was going to be asynchronous but discovered it was synchronous.

The course was a duration of 10 days via webex with a small group (maybe about 12 people) with all of our webcams on for about 3-hour sessions that were a mix of lectures and assignments. Some assignments were analog, others were digital in a collaborative workspace, and there were a few assignments where we broke out into groups, but I don't remember much about those. Everyday included homework assignments which either played into the next day's assignment or was part of a larger final project. At the end of it, they issued a digital certificate and mailed a physical certificate for attending the course which awarded 3 ECTS Credits and stated 80 contact hours, which seems about right.

I found out that the course I took was the first time the University did a course online, prior all courses were in-person and because of covid they had to cancel the previous year or so. Some of the students were going to Germany to attend a few in-person courses, one was trying to find an apartment they could stay at when they were due to arrive; another was stuck in a foreign country due to a visa issue. So as fun as it would be to visit in person, I was happy to be able to do the course fully online. I'll just add visiting Germany & the university to my bucket list.

The instructor adapted the course as needed daily, e.g. some parts were pushed back a day or made the assignment from being a "during class" assignment to a homework assignment, but also tweaked activities to reflect elements of a previous day. Overall, I would do it all over again if I could—the only exception is I would have taken time off from work, which is something I know the other students wish they did too because they would have to jump off the session early, etc.