You are eligible to participate in the survey if you are currently enrolled at Freie Universität Berlin in a single-subject bachelor’s degree program (“Monobachelor”), a core/major subject as part of a combined bachelor’s degree program (“Kombinationsbachelor”), or in studies of law at Freie Universität Berlin.

On May 30, 2024, all students in the groups specified above will receive an email from the Vice President for Teaching, Learning and Academic Development at Freie Universität Berlin containing a personalized tokenlink allowing you to take part in the survey. The survey is only available online.

A tokenlink is a personal access code for the survey that you receive by email. It is used to prevent people outside the defined respondent group from entering submissions and to prevent individuals from submitting multiple responses. The tokenlink expires after use and cannot be used as a personal identifier.

The survey is optimized for all end devices. It can therefore be completed on any mobile end device, including smartphones.

The (bachelor’s) degree program survey starts on May 30, 2024. The survey is scheduled to stay online until June 30, 2014.

The survey of bachelor’s degree and law-students at Freie Universität Berlin is carried out every four years.

As our way of saying thank you, everyone who participates in the survey will be entered into a raffle to win one of sixty vouchers to be spent at Dussmann, Yorck cinemas, or the university cafeterias.

In addition, participating in this survey gives you a chance to provide valuable feedback on your degree program. Your opinions – for example, with regard to how feasible it is to complete the program – are very important to us. They can be used to improve and further develop study conditions, support, advisory services, and other resources for students.

Response times vary depending on the individual. For example, not all questions in the survey will apply to everyone (filtering functions), nor will everyone answer questions in the same amount of time. In preliminary tests, students took approximately twenty minutes to complete the survey.

The content of the survey was agreed upon by the Executive Board, the Division for Academic Affairs, and various departments and central institutes. It contains questions on the following topics:

• Personal information and study program information
• Study conditions: educational career to date
• Your opinion on the courses on offer and the learning environment in your core/major subject (“Kernfach”)

–  Evaluation of modules
–  Evaluation of the quality of instruction
–  Evaluation of study requirements/feasibility of completion (workload)
–  Evaluation of the advising services
–  Evaluation of the examination organization
–  Evaluation of the support and supervision provided by instructors
–  Evaluation of the social climate (contact with fellow students, instructors)
–  Evaluation of hybrid courses

•  For students in combined bachelor’s degree programs: Evaluation of the secondary/minor subjects
•  Evaluation of the General Professional Skills (ABV) or Teacher Education Courses (LBW) specialist areas
•  Study behavior and study experiences so far

–  Time spent abroad
–  Intercultural experiences
–  Individual learning experiences (e.g., experiences of autonomy, perceptions of stress, lack of motivation, difficulties with studying)
–  Academic performance
–  Where applicable, reasons for exceeding the regular time to degree
–  Use of AI-based applications in the degree program

• Living situation during studies (e.g. children, work)
• Study satisfaction
• Acquisition of subject-specific knowledge and English language skills
• Plans for after having completed the bachelor's degree program

The survey also includes some open-ended questions to give you a chance to provide information beyond the standardized responses or to offer a more nuanced view of your suggestions for improving the degree program.

As the survey is anonymous, we request that you do not include any information regarding personal circumstances or descriptions of any specific interactions that occurred that could lead to the identification of an individual. Please refrain from including any personal data of Freie Universität employees or instructors in your answers.

Participation in the survey is voluntary. As such, the extent to which you answer individual questions is also voluntary. If you cannot, or do not wish to, answer a specific question, you can usually skip to the next question. However, this is not the case for some key questions, known as “filter” questions. The answers to these questions determine which follow-up questions are asked. Filter questions must be answered in order to allow for the questionnaire to function properly.

Please note that our aim is to achieve results that are as representative as possible. Each question you answer makes the results more representative. Your responses to questions regarding personal information and study-related information are thus very important and help us to gauge how representative the results are as a whole.

As long as you have not completed and submitted the questionnaire, you can use your tokenlink to log back in and continue answering questions at any time. Your answers are saved automatically, and you will be taken back to the last page you visited upon reopening the survey.

Discontinuing the survey and returning to it at a later date has occasionally led to technical difficulties in the past, so we recommend that you try to complete the survey in one sitting wherever possible. If you experience technical difficulties, please contact the Unit for Teaching and Education Quality at lsq@fu-berlin.de.

You can participate in the raffle after submitting your completed questionnaire, at which point you will be asked to provide an email address where we can contact you if you win. This email address will be stored separately from your survey data. Winners are selected at random by the software after the end of the survey period.

Winners will be contacted in July 2024.

The raffle process has been reviewed and determined to be in compliance with data protection and privacy guidelines. Under Article 6.1a GDPR, we require your consent to process and temporarily store your email address if you wish to participate in the raffle.

The Unit for Teaching and Education Quality prepares a university-wide overall report. This report presents the results, broken down by subject group, and compares them with the results of the last bachelor’s degree program survey in order to identify overarching trends. This report is transmitted to university management. It is presented and discussed within varies bodies and committees and published on the following website.

Reports on the results for specific study programs are provided to the departments and central institutes of Freie Universität Berlin for each core/major subject and each secondary/minor subject in which more than seven students participated in the survey.

Tentatively, the individual reports for each degree program will be available in early 2025, and the full university-wide report will be available during the 2025 summer semester.

The results are used to identify measures that can be taken to improve resources and conditions for students at Freie Universität Berlin.

The Unit for Teaching and Education Quality at Freie Universität Berlin presents the results of the university-wide overall report to university management and other important decision-makers across the university. These include deans’ offices, the Academic Senate, and the Board of Trustees.

The results of the degree program-specific reports are discussed with students and instructors at the degree program level, for example, within the departmental committees in charge of teaching matters and within the department or institute councils.

Detailed information is available here.

The evaluation is performed by the Unit for Teaching and Education Quality at Freie Universität Berlin on behalf of the university management.

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact the Unit for Teaching and Education Quality at lsq@fu-berlin.de or call Irmela Blüthmann (Tel. +49 (0) 30  838-75421 or Susanne Bergann (Tel. +49 (0)30 838-57982.