Reporting teaching at NAT

The Teaching Duties System at DSSNAT hosts an account with duty points for each doctoral candidate. An active TUM-ID (TUM-Kennung) is required.

The TUM School of Natural Sciences has established its teaching duties system for these reasons:

  • to facilitate the reporting of our teaching to the Board of Management of TUM and the Ministry for Education

  • to achieve a fair distribution of the teaching load among our scientific staff and PhD students

  • to document the teaching activities as Active participation in the academic environment of TUM as required by the TUM Regulations for the Awarding of Doctoral Degrees (Promotionsordnung), as well as the TUM Graduate School Statutory Regulations (Statut der TUM-GS)

We have two “units of measurement” for the teaching load required by teaching:

  • LVS (Lehrveranstaltungsstunden, weekly hours of teaching) is the unit used for the teaching report (Lehrleistungsbericht). This report is legally required and formally binding.

  • The units for achieving a fair balancing of the work load, determined by experience and taylored to the specifics of teaching natural sciences are measured in teaching points.

Documentation of the DSSNAT system for reporting teaching activities

Teaching is reportet in our DSSNAT database here: https://app.srv.nat.tum.de/lufv/

There is also a German documentation of the Teaching Duties at the NAT-Wiki.

Quick links to the most important information:

Overview teaching report

Deadlines for the academic year 2022/3

The personal teaching performance reports for the academic year 2022/3 (WS 2022/3 and SS 2023) must be submitted by 3.12.2023; the group reports by 8.12.2023 at the latest.

The deadline for submission of teaching reports for external PhD students and scholarship holders is 22 January 2024.

If by this date neither an individual report (for professors and civil servants) or a report on the teaching performance of the organizational unit has been received by the School Office, the unreported reported teaching performance is deemed not to have been performed!

For PhD students this also implies that teaching that is not reported in time will not be considered for confirming the embedding into the academic environment at TUM (Einbindung ins akademsiche Umfeld der TUM) according to the doctoral regualations at TUM and TUM-GS.

FAQ on the teaching duty system

We answer some frequent questions about reporting teaching at NAT.

The objective of the new teaching system

Question:

Why is there a new system to report the teaching jobs at NAT?

Answer:

Due to the new structure, it was not possible to continue the old system from the former Physics Department. We had to implement a new system that fits all our professional profiles and all courses of study at NAT.

It was also necessary to develop a new database and software solution.

Basic information on the teaching system

Question:

What are the basic principles of the teaching system?

Answer:

Please have a look at the section List of teaching services

Too few points for supervising exams

Question:

In the old physics system, supervising or inspecting an exam session of one hour was worth 50 points. However, in the new system, we are awarded only 10 points per supervision or inspection of a one-hour exam session.

Answer:

This was a flaw in the old system. We strive to balance the workload. As a general rule, jobs without direct teaching should yield about 10 points per work hour (see section List of teaching services).

Tasks for exercise modules

Question:

Please summarize the different tasks involved in teaching exercise modules.

Answer:

There are different tasks for presenting exercise module courses to students:

  1. Exercise group leader / Übungsgruppenleiter (1 Exercise group / 1 Übungsgruppe): Prepare the exercise problems for the students, provide instruction to the exercise group

  2. Exercise group leader / Übungsgruppenleiter (many exercise groups / viele Übungsgruppen): Attendance of the preliminary meeting (Vorbesprechung), provide instruction to the exercise group

  3. Exercise group coordinator (many exercise groups, typically 10): Prepare the exercise problems for the students, hold the preliminary meeting with exercise group leaders, and publish the master solution

Please note that the position of an exercise group coordinator is only intended for large groups of several hundred students per exercise module.

Points for teaching exercises

Question:

How many points will I get for an exercise with 2 SWS for one semester? I have invested a lot of time because, in addition to holding the exercise, I also created all the exercise sheets and sample solutions myself.

Answer:

There are 1008 points for holding an exercise of 2 SWS for an entire semester. This includes the time spent preparing the sheets and solutions.

There have been many suggestions to increase this value, e.g., doubling it to 2016 points. This would correspond to a total time expenditure of about 12 hours per week for a double-hour exercise. However, the law stipulates that a lecture or exercise of 2 SWS corresponds to a time expenditure of 6 hours. We know the time required for good teaching is often higher than this flat rate. Unfortunately, we cannot arbitrarily use twice this amount as a basis, for example. We would then have to double the points in other areas, and the point target would also have to be doubled.

Therefore, we consider it a good approach to fix the number of points for a 2 SWS exercise at close to 1000 and adjust the other services to this reference value depending on the time required.

Too few points for teaching an exercise / tutorial

Question:

I was told by a colleague that I would get 2000 points for a 2 SWS exercise: 1000 for the exercise and 1000 (or 1400) for the coordination of my exercise. Could you please correct that?

Answer:

Unfortunately no. The “coordination of exercise groups” points were always limited to exceptional cases where many students and many exercise groups had to be coordinated.

More information on why we fix the value for a 2 SWS to 1008 points is found in FAQ Points for teaching exercises.

Preparing a lecture script or other supplementary materials

Question:

I have spent a lot of time preparing a script for my supervisor / preparing digital teaching materials. How many points will I get?

Answer:

In principle, additional tasks such as preparing computer practicals and scripts, etc., could be entered similarly to mid-term corrections (for the respective course). You and your supervisor should clarify this in advance with the dean of studies.

Points required as an external PhD student

Question:

I am an external PhD student at [XYZ]. I have been told that I have a total workload of 1000 points (or 1 exercise of 2 SWS) throughout my PhD. Now I see that this has been changed to 2000 points (2 Exercises of 2 SWS). Could you please correct that?

Answer:

Unfortunately, no. The minimum requirement for external PhD students in the former Physics Department has always been 2000 points corresponding to two exercises of 2 SWS (at least for much longer than ten years).

More information about the teaching duty system and the requirements are found here:

Problems with the TUM account or teaching account

Question:

I need help accessing my account / I do not see all my PhD students / all reports in the DSSNAT system. Now that the deadline is approaching, what should I do?

Answer:

There are still some things we still need to work on. Currently, we also have a staff shortage, so extending all expired TUM accounts, etc., in due course is impossible. All emails and reports we have already received or will receive in time will be read and dealt with. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee this will happen before 22 January 2024.