When you begin the semester

To use STiNE, you will need a uni username, a password, and a transaction number (TAN) list. The Regional Computing Center at Universität Hamburg will send you your login details for STiNE by postal mail to your work address. For the first application, contact the staff member responsible.

For adjunct lecturers, access to STiNE is automatically activated until the end of the following semester.

As teaching staff, you can take care of a variety of administrative tasks via the STiNE academic information portal. There is no need to install anything on your computer—Internet access and an up-to-date browser suffice.

Log into the STiNE portal using your username and password. When you log in the first time, you will be prompted to set your own password and answer a security question. After you log in, you will be directed to the home page. Select “Lehre” (teaching) in the menu to access the functions that are relevant for you.

If you ever lose your documents, go to the Regional Computing Center at Universität Hamburg (Schlüterstraße 70) and present your identity card to be issued replacement documents.

In case of technical questions or if you have problems with your login details, contact the STiNE support service at the Regional Computing Center (RRZ):

• Advising and contact

STiNE links:

• STiNE home page
  • Links to the FAQ, services, and tutorials

Entries in the annotated course catalog (online)

STiNE offers you as a member of the teaching staff the opportunity to comment on your course and thus provide additional information for students. Precise and full details in the annotation help reduce the number of inquiries from students. Do this by first selecting “Lehre” in the top menu bar and then “Veranstaltung” in the menu bar on the left-hand side of the screen. Then, select the course to be described from the courses for the relevant semester, and click on the menu item “Veranstaltungsbeschreibung” in the middle of the screen.

On the following page, you can provide a brief description of your course and add additional information on the learning objectives, the teaching concept, the literature, and information on the examinations (e.g., the scope and deadline for term papers). The submission address must also be specified. It is not possible to submit term papers, project work, or essays to the academic office until further notice. Thus, there are only 2 options: (a) submission by email and PDF attachment to the lecturer’s email address or (b) postal delivery to the lecturer’s office address.

Enter the respective texts without special characters, as these are not supported by STiNE and result in the annotation being displayed incorrectly.

Also, note that most students have the language set to German in STiNE and can therefore read only the German description. However, we encourage you to provide this information in English for our Erasmus students. If your course is taught in English and therefore also announced in English, copy your English-language announcement into the German-language announcement for the reasons mentioned above.

For longer texts, we strongly recommend that you preformulate them and copy them into the relevant fields in STiNE; otherwise, a timeout may occur during typing, and the entries will be lost.

As soon as you have completed your entries, click on “Speichern.” The description you have entered must be published by the academic office; otherwise, students cannot read it. As a rule, the academic office publishes the annotations one week before the start of the first general registration period.

Some degree programs’ subject-specific regulations (FSBs) provide for tutorials for certain courses. The respective lecturers are responsible for recruiting tutors; if possible, this should be done during the lecture period of the preceding semester. Tutorials that are planned in the FSBs are financed through the department’s budget. At the office, inform yourself or the front office in advance about the current procedure and the required information and documents. Then submit your tutorials with the application and documents at least 7 weeks before the contract starts (usually on 1 April or 1 October) to the office.

If additional tutorials are to be set up each semester for specific uses, an application for funding must be submitted to the departmental committee.

Rooms for tutorials

When planning semesters, sufficient seminar and small-group rooms are reserved for tutorials. Tutors should call the degree program coordination team. Before the start of the semester, lecturers whose courses include tutorials will receive an email from the academic office in good time to forward to tutors with further information on the room-allocation process.

• Contacting degree program coordination

Semester dates:

• STiNE registration periods
• Other semester dates

Students can register for or withdraw from examinations in the form of a term paper or project work up to the last day of the lecture period. Students can register for or withdraw from written examinations (in-person or take-home examinations) up to 72 hours before the examination date.

To receive a list of participants for your course after the changes and corrections period ends (after the second week of lectures), find your course in STiNE and click on “Teilnehmer.” Be aware that the list displays all registered participants, including those who have already withdrawn from the examination. Therefore, the list cannot be used as an examination list.

If fewer than 10 participants have registered by the end of the general registration period* (for teaching contracts, fewer than 5; for 2-semester courses, fewer than 15), the course is initially deemed as not having been approved by the office of the dean unless it is a required course without options. The latter can also take place if the number of participants is between 5 and 9. (* In the winter semester, the general registration period for courses that are also open to first-semester students runs longer—usually, until the Thursday before the start of the lecture period).

If the minimum number of participants is not reached during the general registration period and subsequent registrations are not expected during the changes and corrections phase, the degree program director will coordinate the cancellation of the course with you and, if necessary, the module coordinators. At this point, the lecturer can decide whether they would like to hold the course in any case—that is, even if the minimum number of participants has not been reached and, also, without receiving credit toward their obligatory teaching load (office of the dean resolution of 25 June 2013).

Seminars in the Department of Social Sciences are generally restricted in terms of attendance for teaching reasons. Seminar places are allocated according to set criteria agreed with the program director. Lecturers are not permitted to deviate from these guidelines, as deviations necessarily influence teaching forms and supervision densities in other courses.

However, when allocating seminar places, there may be particular hardships, such as:

• times or weekly schedules that are not reasonable for disabled or chronically ill students or for parents
• allocation of a course that overlaps another required course
• other hardships resulting from the student’s life situation.

In such cases, students can submit an application for subsequent admission to a course (a so-called hardship application) to the academic office. Students must submit their hardship applications by the end of the changes and corrections phase. The chair of the examinations board is responsible for taking decisions on the applications received. The following applies: the group sizes of all alternative courses should not deviate by more than 30 percent from the original group size due to subsequent admissions to seminars.

• Application for subsequent admission to a course

We would like to make it clear that lecturers do not decide whether to approve hardship applications and that the approval of such applications is not dependent on a lecturer’s willingness to admit additional students to their course. Such an approach to allocating seminar places would result in lecturers experiencing pressure, a deterioration of teaching and supervision, an unequal examination load, and, possibly, the removal of seminars with fewer than 10 participants from the degree program after the start of the semester.