ITS News 02/2024

New momentum in e-learning:

With a new version and optimized interface

Just in time for the start of the 2024 summer semester, the eLearning system has introduced a new version with a revised interface. This improves the display of the page, especially on mobile operating systems. Many functions of the new interface, such as quick course access in the navigation bar, were largely supported and coordinated by the "Moodle at Universities" association, of which the University of Bayreuth is a founding member. In addition to the new interface, the update of the underlying
Moodle software brings with it a variety of new functions, a selection of which we would like to present to you:

1. Improved course navigation

The newly integrated, collapsible navigation area on the left side of the course offers improved navigation, especially in extensive courses, and enables users to quickly and specifically access the desired course content. In addition, the block area on the right edge of the screen can also be collapsed in the standard layout to give the course content more space. In addition, the access and completion requirements for activities are presented to participants directly and clearly.

2. Improvements to the editing mode

When editing courses, lecturers and course supervisors have numerous additional functions at their disposal that make it easier for them to create, edit and structure courses. These include:

The availability of activities for students can be adjusted directly on the course page

Moving course content in the navigation bar

"Bulk actions" for directly duplicating, moving, deleting and adjusting the availability of activities

3. New text editor TinyMCE

As the previous text editor Atto had not been actively developed for some time and its support for mobile operating systems was considered inadequate, it was time to replace it with a more modern editor.

4. Question library

As part of versions 4.0 to 4.3 of Moodle, extensive innovations were implemented in the question library. This collection forms the backbone of the tests in Moodle by providing questions that can then be used in tests and courses.

The updated question bank offers several improvements, including the ability to version questions, simplified sorting, and the ability to check directly in the bank which tests and in which version the questions are used. These changes lay the technical foundation for further improvements, the long-term goal of which is to enable questions to be used across multiple courses. For example, a chair could generate the tests for all its courses from a central course.

The project to improve the question bank was made possible and funded by the financial support of universities (including the Open University, ETH Zurich, BFH Bern, TU Berlin, Hochschule Hannover, RWTH Aachen, etc.) and Moodle at universities.

Safe start to the semester

In line with the "ITS Knowledge" series, the ITS also offers information events for students on a loose basis. Under the motto "Safe start to the semester", together with the K11 (Cybercrime) department of the Bayreuth Criminal Investigation Department, all students were invited to find out first-hand about working safely on computers on April 18, 2024, because their private computers are one of the most important work tools for students today.

The University of Bayreuth's information security officer, Ralf Stöber, explained the most important rules for working safely with the services of the University of Bayreuth. He pointed out that emails are the main attack route for cybercriminals and strongly recommended the training on email security on the video server of the University of Bayreuth: Email security SS 2021 German (uni-bayreuth.de)

From K11, Chief Detective Inspector Markus Hahn and Senior Detective Inspector Theresa Schödel presented current cybercriminal scams and gave many tips on how to recognize them and protect yourself from them. The topics discussed included fake bank employees, identity theft on the Internet and money laundering.

It is important to note that money laundering can be done not only through cash or transfers, but also, for example, through forwarding goods. So be on your guard against job advertisements where you can earn extra money by forwarding goods, because this is a criminal offense.

The large number of inquiries showed the strong interest of the participants. For this reason, it is planned to offer a similar event again at the beginning of the winter semester.

AI and digitalization in focus:

At the DC24 in Magdeburg

The DC24, the second "Digital Campus - University Conference", which took place from March 21 to March 22, 2024 in Magdeburg, highlighted the variety of opportunities, challenges and best practices in the field of university digitization. In workshops and lectures, the participating universities exchanged their knowledge and experiences in order to create future-oriented educational landscapes.

In his keynote speech, Johannes Sommer, CEO of Retresco GmbH, put forward the core thesis that AI is massively changing the digital world. However, it is impossible to predict exactly what this change will look like in a few years. It was similar with the introduction of the iPhone: Nobody suspected that it would not only revolutionize the mobile Internet, but even make it possible to buy milk in the supermarket.

In his lecture "Developing digitization & AI skills and anchoring them (extra-)curricularly", Prof. Dr. Torsten Eymann, CIO of the University of Bayreuth, discussed the influence of AI on the university world. He emphasized that AI skills should play an important role in almost all degree programs. The topic is not limited to new degree programs that explicitly have AI in their name. AI should also find its way into traditional bachelor's and master's degree programs such as business administration, law, humanities and STEM subjects. The challenge is to integrate AI appropriately without overloading the already condensed teaching modules of bachelor's degrees. One possible solution is interdisciplinary modules in the style of a Studium Generale for the subject area of AI. In addition, additional or postgraduate courses with appropriate qualifications could offer real added value.

For the first time, the Digital Campus Award was presented by UniNow GmbH as part of the conference. The basis for this award was an extensive survey of students at German universities and colleges.

UniNow's Digital Campus Index provides information on students' satisfaction with digitization at their university. It evaluates the digital quality of lectures, equipment, administration and other areas. The ranking was based on a star rating in the survey in UniNow's campus apps. A total of 12,715 students used the app's survey function to rate digitization at their university or college. The University of Bayreuth took first place among the universities and a very good eighth place in the overall ranking. This recognition motivates the University of Bayreuth to continue to consistently drive digitization forward, as Prof. Dr. Susanne Tittlbach, Vice President for Digitization, Innovation and Sustainability, emphasizes.

Workshops & knowledge tests:

About the information security week in the summer semester

Our information security week will take place again from June 3rd to 7th, 2024. New this summer semester are our workshops on the topic of "Safe working in everyday life" as well as video training courses on other security topics and a knowledge test e-learning system Moodle.

From July 3rd, we will also be offering all members of the University of Bayreuth compact video training courses via Moodle, which will of course also be available after the information security week. In Moodle you will find additional information on the topics as well as our exciting knowledge test, with which you can test your knowledge of information security yourself. You will receive the link to these video training courses via a separate newsflash. Of course, all content is available as usual in both German and English.

This year, the information security officer, Ralf Stöber, will inform you about the following topics: The current attack methods used by cyber criminals and how you can best protect yourself against them. There is also information on the security of PDF files and the correct behavior in an emergency if your computer is affected by a cyber attack.

Registration for these workshops takes place via the e-learning system:

https://elearning.uni-bayreuth.de/course/view.php?id=18885

Dispute over Asterisk - A satire for programmers

Since April 1st, the world of program code writers has been mourning the loss of Asterisk. No, that is not a non-binary Gaul, but the special character that caused so much displeasure among the supreme chief of the Bavarian tribe that it is to be removed from official language forever. Yet this little asterisk has served us programmers invaluably for many years. For example, as a multiplication operator. In many programming languages, notations with asterisks are common practice, such as:

Result = 7 * 6 # $Result is 42.

In the high-level languages C and C++, the asterisk is used to point to the value that a pointer points to:
int number = 42;

int *pointer = &number; // pointer to the variable 'number'
int value = *pointer; // Value that 'pointer' points to (42)

If that was too nerdy for you, let me tell you: 42 has been the answer to all questions since Douglas Adams' novel "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Incidentally, 42 is also the decimal ASCII code for the gender asterisk. So much agreement with the answer to the final question about life, the universe and everything else can't really be a coincidence. Only an AI-capable supercomputer like Deep Thought could think of something like that.

Even in the supreme IT discipline, regular expressions, the asterisk is used as a wildcard or placeholder for any character. A *.txt matches all files with the extension .txt. The expression /usr/*/bin matches Unix paths like /usr/local/bin or /usr/sbin/bin.

The character string .* is actually one of the most tolerant placeholders of all. It finds 0 or more occurrences of any character. But tolerance is probably not in demand in politically charged times, which is why the gender star is unfortunately on the decline.
But even if for some people active in politics diversity seems to be just the plural of simplicity, the little gender star in many programming languages shows us that they have always been inclusive. Unfortunately, this cannot be said of politics in Bavaria, at least not at the moment.