Online platforms for organising your studies
Manage your studies online
In addition to the services offered by the Student Records Office, there are several tools you can use to manage your studies online. You can create your study plan, see your grades, download seminar notes, manage e-mail addresses, catch up on lectures on the video portal and much more. Below is an overview of the student portals.
F
The FAUcard is a multifunction chip card that also acts as your student or doctoral candidate ID.
It combines the following functions: student or doctoral candidate ID, library card for the University Library, electronic purse and ID for electronic access control. The card will be sent to your German address approximately six weeks after you enrol at FAU.
Note that the FAUcard must be validated before it is used for the first time and at the beginning of each semester. You will need to use the validation stations at the University for this. If you want to use the payment function of the card, for example to pay for a meal at one of the University restaurants, you must add money to the card. You can use the cash-to-chip machines at the University for this.
More information on the FAUcard is available on the FAU website.
At FAU, each student receives their own e-mail address. You can use it after activation of your student user ID in IdM. You can access this mailbox using webmail at https://faumail.fau.de (German only) or by using e-mail programmes such as Outlook or Thunderbird.
If you do not want to use this address actively, you can also change the settings to have your e-mails forwarded to another address at the given URL.
I
IdM is short for ‘Identity Management,’ the central user management system at FAU and the IdM portal is the first point of contact for managing your ‘digital identity.’ Via this website, you can manage your user ID which will also allow you to use other web services at the University such as StudOn, mein campus, and campo and obtain an overview of your personal user account and degree details. First semester students have to activate their user ID — which is on the information sheet from the Student Records Office and on your student ID card — via the URL given below:
How to activate your IdM account
M
The online administration portal ‘mein campus’ is the virtual counterpart to the Student Records Office and the Examinations Office (see Examinations/Examinations Office). It includes functions for student, examination, and class administration.
You can manage your personal account details, register for examinations and obtain an overview of your grades via www.campus.fau.de. You can also print out your official documents and certificate of enrolment via mein campus.
www.campus.fau.de (German only)
O
OPACplus provides online access to the FAU library catalogue. The catalogue allows you to search the entire University Library and all branch libraries. Apart from books and printed journals, you can also access electronic journals and literature databases. Via OPACplus, you can also use the inter-library loan services for literature which is not available at FAU and the campus delivery service FAUdok.
S
StudOn is FAU’s platform for online learning and course management. Students can register for courses via StudOn and access or store seminar handouts, reading lists and general information. StudOn also allows direct exchange between students and lecturers in forums, chats and Wikis. StudOn is also used for online examinations. Students can log on with their University user account: www.studon.fau.de.
U
UnivIS is short for University Information System. As the name already indicates, it is FAU’s central information system. Via UnivIS, you have access to the electronic course catalogue and can compile a list of the classes you are taking. UnivIS also contains a directory of all people and institutions at FAU, a publication database and information on current job offers. Via the integrated search function, you can locate all rooms at FAU and get the contact details of staff and lecturers.
V
The FAU video portal (www.fau.tv) offers a wide variety of videos of lectures or seminars and other videos relevant to your studies. Over 1400 ‘courses’ are currently online.
The video portal was developed in-house by the Erlangen Regional Computing Centre and can be accessed via a web browser without any additional software. Limited access content can at present only be viewed via the video portal in connection with StudOn.
The freely-accessible videos are usually also available via Apple Podcast.