Current information on the coronavirus

Please make sure to use your @EDU e-mail address whenever you communicate with teaching staff and other members of university staff.

Please also remember to check your @EDU e-mail account regularly, as important information communicated by the university is issued exclusively through the @EDU e-mail system.

The entrance will remain open between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Monday to Friday and on Saturday between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Please only come to the university in order to enrol, to borrow books or if you are unable to  follow your online course from home.

update: 14 January 2021

Courses will be held online throughout the winter semester 2020/21, i.e. including January. There are just a few isolated exceptions to this principle, and you will be notified individually, if you are affected.

Teaching in the summer semester of 2021

Unfortunately, as things stand at the moment, it seems likely that the start of the summer semester will also have to be digital. As soon as the infection situation permits it, we will facilitate teaching in real lecture halls once more. Appropriate arrangements will be made at that time for any students subject to entry restrictions and for at-risk groups.

Observing the hygiene rules

For the sake of all of us, please follow the prescribed hygiene measures meticulously. This means, above all, that you must also wear a protective face mask in the lecture halls and seminar rooms, keep your distance, observe the seating arrangements (only sit in designated seats) and comply with the guidelines for managing contact persons. Please follow the instructions issued by the course lecturers in this regard. Failure to do so will result in expulsion from the lecture hall or seminar room and, in the case of persistent refusal, exclusion from the course. These measures are governed by a supplement to the house rules.

The most effective measures that are currently known and generally applicable for the protection of oneself and others from a COVID-19 infection are the strict observance of a minimum distance and of the hygiene rules:

• Keep a minimum distance of one metre from other people, preferably two metres.
• Wear a protective face mask.
• Wash your hands with soap regularly and thoroughly. If this is not possible, use a virucidal disinfectant.
• Cough and sneeze into the crook of your arm (even when you are wearing a face mask).
• Avoid crowds.
• Refrain from shaking hands and giving hugs.
• You too can help to ensure that rooms are aired regularly and there is an adequate flow of air.
• Disinfect your seat and desk area in the lecture hall/seminar room before use.
• Do not attend the university if you are feeling unwell.

Clinical criteria (as at 9 September 2020)

Any person with an acute respiratory infection (with or without a fever) and at least one of the following symptoms for which there is no other plausible explanation:

• cough
• sore throat
• shortness of breath
• sudden loss of the sense of taste/smell

Where appropriate diagnostic evidence is available, persons with clinical criteria and symptoms other than those mentioned (e.g. vomiting, diarrhoea) may also be classified as suspected cases.

Reporting a suspected or confirmed case

The University of Klagenfurt is duty bound to report suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 to the responsible health authority without delay.

All members of the university (students, staff) are required to contact the university immediately in the event of a suspected case. A dedicated e-mail address has been set up for this purpose:

E-mail in the event of a suspected or confirmed case: covid-meldung [at] aau [dot] at

Behaviour in the event of a suspected case

• Avoid contact with others.
• Leave the university and/or go to your own place of residence as soon as possible. Do not use public transport.
• Telephone the health hotline on 1450.
• Send notification by e-mail to: covid-meldung [at] aau [dot] at and to your course lecturers.
• Make a note of the persons you had contact with over the previous 48 hours.
• Stay at home until the (negative) test result has been obtained.

The University of Klagenfurt is under obligation to provide information about a suspected COVID-19 case and its relevant contact persons. All personal and health-related details concerning members of the university will be handled with care and in accordance with the legal regulations.

Consequently, information must be collected in courses and examinations to ascertain who has been where on campus.

Definition of contact persons (as at 9 September 2020)

Contact persons are persons with contact to a confirmed case during the period from the beginning of contagiousness until the end of isolation. Contagiousness is defined as early as 48 hours before the onset of the disease (i.e. before the onset of symptoms) or, in asymptomatic cases, 48 hours before the collection of the sample that led to a positive test result. The end of the infectious period cannot be stated with certainty at present.

A distinction is made between contact persons with high-risk exposure (K1) and contact persons with low-risk exposure (K2):

Contact persons with high-risk exposure (K1):

• Persons with direct physical contact with a confirmed case.
• Persons who have had face-to-face contact with a confirmed case for a cumulative period of 15 minutes or more at a distance of less than or equal to 2 metres (especially within the same household).
• Persons who have looked after a confirmed case.
• Persons who have been in the same room as a confirmed case at a distance of less than or equal to 2 metres for 15 minutes or longer, but also
• Persons who, regardless of distance, are likely to have been exposed to a relevant concentration of airborne particles (e.g. at a party).

Contact persons with low-risk exposure (K2):

• Persons who have had face-to-face contact with a confirmed case for less than 15 minutes in total at a distance of less than or equal to 2 metres or persons who have been in the same room (e.g. seminar room, meeting room, kitchen) with a confirmed case at a distance of more than 2 metres for 15 minutes or longer or at a distance of less than or equal to 2 metres for less than 15 minutes.

You are a contact person: Now what?

The authorities usually contact the contact persons directly within the scope of contact tracing. If this happens, you must follow the instructions of the authorities. If you think you might be a contact person for a specific reason, e.g. because you have been contacted directly by someone who is ill, phone 1450 and follow their instructions.

Management of contact persons in the University Library

The library is running a system for the management of contact persons, including during the opening hours of the circulation desk. As is the case with the 24-hour library, the electronically controlled turnstiles will remain closed at all times. This means that university members need to carry their AAU card with them in order to be able to access the library.

Important Information

The university urges you to keep a contact diary / seating diary so that contacts can be traced even after several days have passed. In the event of a suspected or confirmed case, the contact diary makes it much easier to trace relevant contacts. The contact diary is strictly private and only serves as an aid to memory in the event of a suspected or confirmed case.

In addition, the university also strongly recommends that you install and activate the Red Cross Stop Corona App.

Lecture halls and classrooms are disinfected in the course of the morning and evening cleaning routines. Particular attention is given to the disinfection of table/desk surfaces, the edges of desks/tables, door handles, coat racks, lecterns, etc.

Please make use of the possibility to disinfect your seat. The necessary equipment will be provided in the lecture halls/seminar rooms.

The use of protective face masks is mandatory in all public areas, library, aula, lecture halls, classrooms, corridors, and toilets.

Students must wear protective masks during lectures, seminars, written and oral examinations. We recommend FFP2 masks.

The ministry recommends the use of a tight-fitting protective face mask. Face visors and chin guards are not an adequate substitute for a tight-fitting face mask, and are therefore not permitted on campus. Please use a protective face mask at all times, ideally choosing the non-woven kind.

www.aau.at/en/corona/exams

No face-to-face exams until the end of March 2021

Examinations will be conducted exclusively online until the end of March. Your course instructors will inform you about the examination procedures in a timely manner. Given the continued high rates of infection, particularly in Carinthia, holding face-to-face examinations, which the university gave serious consideration to, is simply not an option.

Information on examinations 

For information on the mode of your examination please refer to the course planner.

Rules for online oral exams

• An examination can only take place via video conference system if all parties involved (candidate and examiners) agree to this examination mode in advance. During the examination, the candidates’ camera settings must allow uninterrupted eye contact.
• The recommended tools are those provided by Central Computing Services (ZID), i.e. Classroom (classroom.aau.at) or BigBlueButton (via Moodle). Any recording of the examination (by whomever) is subject to the consent of all parties involved. As a general rule, we advise against making a recording.
• Please be ready to show your student ID card and hold it up to the camera when invited to do so by the examiners.
• To prevent the use of unauthorised aids, you are required to demonstrate compliance by panning your camera around the room. You must repeat this procedure during the examination whenever the examiners instruct you to do so. There must be no unauthorised aids (including mobile phones or tablet PCs that won’t be needed during the examination) in your vicinity during the exam. The examination will be terminated if there is a suspicion of unauthorised aids being used.
• In order to ensure that the examination proceeds in an orderly fashion, the examiners can restrict public admittance (allowing third parties to observe) to a technically acceptable minimum. If a technical problem occurs during the examination (interruptions to the transmission, video/audio outages, etc.), the examination can be continued, provided that the interruption was only short.
• At the end of the examination, the result must be communicated and a brief explanatory statement must be given. In the case of examinations by a panel of examiners, the examiners consult amongst themselves by temporarily “switching off” the candidate (e.g. by using a break-out room). If, for technical reasons, it is not possible to resume the video conference to announce the result of the consultation, the result must be communicated by another suitable method (e.g. e-mail or telephone) without delay.
• Those candidates who do not agree to an online examination will be assigned an examination date shortly after the general resumption of in-person examinations.

Reporting a suspected / confirmed case to the authorities: 1450

Reporting a suspected / confirmed case to the University of Klagenfurt:
covid-meldung [at] aau [dot] at

Members of the university community fall into category 6 (slightly elevated) according to the national vaccination strategy. We are in close contact with the State of Carinthia in this regard and will update you as soon as we have any firm information on vaccinations.

 The reading rooms of the University Library will remain closed until 24 January 2021. However, you can still borrow books.

More detailed information and opening hours will be available on the library website https://www.aau.at/en/university-library-klagenfurt/

Please consult the USI website to check the status of your course(s).

Please refer to the website of the University Sports Institute for the latest applicable provisions.

On 13 and 14 January 2021 (Wed: 09:00 to 12:00, Thu: 13:00 to 15:00) you can only enrol in person if you have first contacted the Admissions and Examinations Office by e-mail or telephone.

As of 19 January 2021, the Admissions and Examinations Office will be open once again – primarily to assist students wishing to enrol.

For all other matters, if possible, please continue to contact the Admissions and Examinations Office by e-mail (studienabteilung [at] aau [dot] at) or by phone. You can also submit various applications online using the student portal.

Opening hours of the Admission and Examinations Office as from 19 January 2021

Tuesday and Wednesday: 9 a.m. to 12 noon

Thursday: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

studienabteilung [at] aau [dot] at

Website of the Admission Office

Family Services will continue to provide childcare during standard opening hours, if required (Monday – Thursday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.).

This offer is intended for the children of university staff who have already made use of the childcare and educational services offered by the flexible childcare facility in the past. In addition, Family Services is pleased to offer emergency childcare for healthy children who cannot currently be looked after in their regular day care facilities (e.g., childminders, children’s groups, kindergartens and primary schools, grandparents), for example because these facilities are currently closed.

Procedure: Parents send a written request detailing their childcare needs to familienservice [at] aau [dot] at by e-mail.  Reservations for childcare places are only valid once Family Services confirms the reservation in writing.

Voluntary excursions will be suspended until further notice.

Mandatory excursions will be suspended until further notice. In this context, we ask the departments to offer alternatives that can be considered as equivalent.

Recognition of activities carried out in connection with COVID-19

In accordance with Section 3 (3) of the COVID-19 Higher Education Act (Federal Law Gazette I 2020/23), activities carried out in connection with COVID-19 in the interest of public safety, health care, education or the security of supply can be credited/recognized at universities (…) to the extent of 4 ECTS credits per month

• as freely chosen courses, provided that these are stipulated in the curriculum, or
• as modules or courses correspondingly designated in the curriculum in line with 31 (3) of the Students Act, or
• as internships or work placements, insofar as these activities correspond to the internships required by the curriculum.

In addition to the recognition as electives and/or internships, the recognition of such activities by way of a course swap may also be considered. Please contact your programme director in this regard.

Deadline for the submission of Bachelor’s theses

Pursuant to Section 12 C-UHV, the university’s internal deadline for the submission of Bachelor’s theses shall be extended by a period corresponding to the time during which the student was prevented from completing or submitting the thesis for reasons connected with COVID-19. These provisions are extremely vague – we have instructed our teaching staff to adopt a flexible and accommodating approach in this regard.

Deadline for the submission of seminar papers and papers involving comparable effort (acc. to Section 10 (2) Part B of the University Statutes)

The deadline for the submission of seminar papers and papers involving comparable effort (acc. to Section 10 (2) Part B of the University Statutes) written in the context of courses with ongoing assessment during the winter semester of 2019/20 shall end on 30 September 2020. In exceptional justified cases, the course instructor can extend this deadline.
For the summer semester of 2020, no extension of the deadline has been defined yet; the period stipulated in the University Statutes (pursuant to section 10 (2) of the Statutes, Part B) runs until 31 January 2021.

StEOP rule on bringing examinations forward

The 22 ECTS credit limit with regard to taking exams prior to the proper completion of the Introduction & Orientation Phase (StEOP) has been lifted temporarily. This means that more than 22 ECTS credits can be brought forward, as long as these examinations are taken by 31 July 2021.

Registration requirements defined in the curricula

Registration requirements defined in the curricula concerning the registration for courses, course examinations and modular examinations are temporarily suspended. This suspension shall not apply only if the programme director, after consulting the curriculum commission, considers the registration requirement to be mandatory. The exception applies to the registration for courses until 30 November 2021.

Specialist internship not possible due to COVID-19 restrictions

In the event that it is not possible to complete a relevant specialist internship as prescribed by the curriculum and any accompanying course due to COVID-19 related restrictions in the summer semester of 2020 and the winter semester of 2020/21, suitable substitutions can be approved by the programme director upon application. Such substitutions include, for instance, a research internship at a university, or the completion of courses, but may also extend to include COVID-19 activities carried out in the interest of public safety, health care, education or the security of supply (Section 3 C-HG), provided that this does not compromise the goal of delivering academic professional training in the respective degree programme.

Covid-19-Regulation on special provisions concerning study matters

The IT Service Desk is currently offering a limited face-to-face service. Effective immediately and until further notice, face-to-face appointments are only available in the mornings by prior arrangement.

However, if you have any questions, problems or wish to make an appointment, you can still contact us by e-mail, telephone or via our online service desk portal.

Phone: (0)463 2700 9666
E-mail: hotline [at] aau [dot] at
online Service Desk portal: https://servicedesk.aau.at

Link: Central Computing Services (ZID)

The International Office (Lakeside Park and Stiftungsgebäude) is currently not open for party traffic. The International Office is available for digital consultations or via telephone.

Personal consultations are only possible in exceptional cases. Please contact us by e-mail (internationales [at] aau [dot] at).

International Office

As of 24 January 2021 the university’s cash desk will be open Monday to Thursday, from 09:00 bis 12:00.

Starting on 11 January, the Mensa will switch to providing a take-away service only. Meals can be collected from 11.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Entrances and exits will be clearly marked.

The Mensa Café in the Aula (main university building) will be closed. 

https://www.mensen.at/

Due to the current progression of the COVID-19 pandemic and the regulations issued by the Federal Government, there will be no Graduation Ceremonies in February and March 2021.

Further information

Parking fees are payable in the winter semester of 2020/21.

Please address any questions to kassa [at] aau [dot] at by e-mail.

Students with disabilities or with a chronic illness can turn to the university’s representative for disabled students, Mark Wassermann, for counselling and advice.

The university’s aim is to reduce uncertainties, allow room for every type of question, and fulfil our responsibilities in the interest of all parties, by making the best possible use of the opportunities available to us.

To schedule an appointment, please contact Mark Wassermann directly: mark [dot] wassermann [at] aau [dot] at

Despite the current coronavirus crisis, the team at the Psychological Counseling Center are standing by to offer students psychological counseling and psychotherapy. Consultations can take place via telephone, e-mail or, by prior arrangement, via video conference and online chat.

For further information, tips for dealing with corona, and contact details, please visit the website of the Psychological Counseling Center.