Communities

Academic unit communities serve the following purposes for WU employees:

• They provide an overview of the institute’s/group’s full course portfolio.
• They are the starting point for users with course editor status to edit the courses assigned to a specific academic unit.
• They provide standard applications for internal communications and knowledge management within an institute or group.

Through academic units, it is possible to grant admin editing rights to users. In this way, specific employees can be named course editors, which gives them editing rights for all courses assigned to the institute. This can be helpful for editing multiple course syllabi, for example. The head of the academic unit can add people with the role "course editor" directly within the academic unit in LEARN. As a course editor, you have access to all courses and course repositories assigned to your academic unit, and you can upload materials and add information to syllabi.

Members are added to academic units automatically.

The following groups of employees are members of an academic unit:

• All employees who are assigned to the corresponding institute or group in SAP
• External lecturers who have an active WU account
• Employees who are added to an academic unit manually. For details on how to add members to an academic unit, please click on Manage members.

WU employees can request the creation of a club. If, for example, you would like to set up a club for a bachelor’s working group or project group, please follow the steps below:

1. Go to the WU-Ticketsystem.
2. Select “Request creation of a course repository/club” and complete the online request form.
3. Once your request has been received and processed, the Digital Teaching Services team will create the club for you and send you a notification.

You can specify whether the club should be open or closed, and you can also define your target group for the club.

You can change the join policy for a club.

1. On the administration page, click on “Administrate” in the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on “options”.
3. You can change the settings by clicking the edit button (“Edit”).
4. Click “OK” to save your settings.

The following join policies are possible:

• Open
  All WU students, faculty, and staff members can add themselves as club members.
• Needs Approval
  All WU students, faculty, and staff members can add themselves as club members, but their club membership has to be approved by a club administrator.
• Closed
  Only club administrators can add WU students, faculty, and staff members as club members.

WU students, faculty, and staff members can add themselves as members of open clubs. For details, please click on "How can I join open clubs?".

You can add yourself as a member of an open club.

1. On your personal MyLEARN starting page, please click on "Manage Memberships" (Screenshot)
2. or an overview of all the communities you are a member of.
3. In the “clubs” table, click on “Add more memberships”.
4. Click on the icon    next to a club to add yourself as club member.
5. If a club has a "needs approval" join policy, you will have to wait until a club administrator confirms your membership,

To leave a club, please click on the icon  next to the club. 

If you teach several parallel courses that use similar materials, you can create a course repository to manage these materials all in a single place. But course repositories also offer some further advantages:

• Course repositories remain active after the end of a semester, and they can only be archived manually
• Students can access open course repositories before the start of the semester to familiarize themselves with the materials and prepare for exams

Only WU employees can request the creation of a course repository. To request the creation of a new course repository, please follow the steps below:

1. Go to the WU-Ticketsystem.
2. Select “Request creation of a course repository/club” and complete the online request form
3. The Digital Teaching Services team will create the course repository for you and send you a notification

Once the course repository has been created, you can start connecting courses to it.

To connect courses to your course repository, please follow the steps below:

1. In the course repository, click on “Administrate” in the menu on the left-hand side of the screen to open the Administration page (Screenshot).
2. Under “Connections,” click on “Courses”.
3. Click on the button “Connect courses”.
4. Please make sure that the right semester is selected.
5. Select the appropriate course and click the button “Connect courses” to connect it to the course repository.

Once you have connected the courses to your course repository, you can transfer materials and information from the repository to the courses.

Some courses are open courses. This means that students are not required to sign up for these courses on LPIS to be able to access the course materials. They can add themselves as members to the course.

1. On your personal MyLEARNn starting page, please click on "Manage Memberships" (Screenshot) or an overview of all the communities you are a member of.
2. Under “Courses,” click on “Add more memberships”.
3. Click on the icon   next to a course to add yourself as a member.

You can drop your membership of a course by clicking on the icon   next to the course. 

Please See "How can I connect courses to my course repository?" in the course repository section.