Oral exams

If you would like to do your depth oral colloquium (Schwerpunktkolloquium) with Klaus Wehrle, please read the following information carefully.

Course Combinations

The depth oral colloquium should comprise at least three modules (12 - 18 credits). Two of them should be elective courses taught by COMSYS. The third module can be one more of these electives, or your seminar topic, if you have done your seminar with COMSYS.

In special cases, courses from other groups can also be accepted as part of the depth oral colloquium if they fit to our teaching areas and if we know the lectures in detail. Please contact Dirk Thißen to ask for feasibility of course combinations.

Registering an Exam Date

For reserving an exam slot, contact the COMSYS office (office@comsys.rwth-aachen.de), not Klaus Wehrle directly. In your mail, please mention your study program, the planned courses to be examined (including the semesters you took them in and - in case of seminars - the name of your advisor), and a preferred time interval in which you would like to do the exam. Please write us a few months in advance - availability of exam slots is not granted.

We will confirm the course combination subsequently and will offer you an exam slot. You have to confirm the exam slot latest four weeks ahead of your exam at the COMSYS office, otherwise your slot might be assigned to another student. In case a seminar or lab is part of your course combination, please hand in your seminar paper / lab report at this time.

If you plan to have an oral exam with two professors, please check first the availability of slots with the COMSYS office and then find a joint date with the other examiner. Then book the final date at the COMSYS office.

Examination Sheet

Please download our examination sheet, fill it in, and bring it with you to the exam.

The Exam Itself

Now you are on your own. We hope you are well prepared. Good luck. ;-)

Optional Examination via Zoom

Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, not every student can sensibly take an oral exam in person. We thus temporarily offer to conduct our oral examinations remotely using the tool zoom. You do not need to register with the service for your examination, as one of our staff members will invite you to join a video conference hosted by COMSYS.

If you want to take your oral exam remotely, you have to consent to the following adapted rules, which are to ensure that you are attending the examination without any further aid; so, please bear with us here. ;-)

Surroundings / Preparation

  1. For sufficient quality of the remote examination, ensure that you have at least a 2 Mbps downlink and 2 Mbps uplink, which ideally you use exclusively during the examination.
  2. Preferably, use headphones and a dedicated microphone.
  3. Please share your mobile phone number with your examiner in advance so that we can contact you in case of an interrupted connection.
  4. Please keep 3-4 sheets of empty paper ready.
  5. Otherwise, make sure that your desk is empty.
  6. We require you to join the video conference both with your main device and your smartphone.
    • Make sure that both devices are fully charged or connected to a charger.

During the Examination

  1. You are not allowed to create a recording of the examination in any way, if you do we’ll probably notice. :-) We will update the declaration you must sign before your examination accordingly.
  2. Using the smartphone during the examination:
    • Please mute the audio in zoom on your smartphone (don’t have both microphones active).
    • Before the examination starts, please follow our requests to show us via your smartphone that you are in an environment where you can properly take the examination (e.g., nobody else in the room with you, no printouts or notes flying around, etc.).
    • Point your smartphone camera at your monitor(s) to prove that you are only seeing the maximized video conference.
    • Your smartphone may also be used to show the examiner any sketches you might be requested to create as part of the examination.
  3. Make sure that we can see your upper body and both hands and especially that you are not operating any other devices. After all, we are the chair of communication and distributed systems. :-)

We know that these requirements are rather excessive and may even seem ridiculous, but this way we ensure that the remote examination is on the same level with in-person examinations at our chair.

Zoom Tutorial

  • You don’t have to prepare anything before the examination starts; instead, you will install zoom on the fly
  • Immediately before your examination starts, a staff member will send you details for joining the meeting via email
  • This link will allow you to install zoom on your device, please proceed to do so on your main device and your smartphone
  • When logging into the meeting, you need the meeting ID and the password

In case of questions…

… please contact Dirk Thißen.