Teaching

This page gives you an overview of relevant information regarding teaching and exam activities and logging at MGMT.

Teaching and supervision

Timetable planning

Please be aware of the following rules regarding the scheduling of your teaching: Principles for the planning of teaching activities at Aarhus BSS

Be particularly aware of the following: 'The teaching takes place on Monday to Thursday from 8:00-18:00 and on Friday from 8:00-16:00. The academic staff is available for teaching in this time period, and exceptions to this due to extraordinary circumstances must always be approved for the semester in question by the head of department.' 
Principles for teaching planning at MGMT

Timetables for teaching

Rooms and equipment

Copyright and course literature

If you need help with the literature for your course, please see Reading list services

For more information on the rules of copyright, please check information and resources available at AU Library

If you have questions or problems related to this, please contact the department's liaison librarians

Supervision

At MGMT we supervise on a number of different activities.

For HA/BSc(B)/BA, CM/MSc, the supervision almost exclusively takes place in the spring. In the preceding autumn, you will be contacted by a study secretary about your availability to supervise projects, and asked to provide key words/topics that students can use to find you. Please note that there are different supervisor lists for HA and CM and that the same key words/topics might not be relevant for both lists, as the CM programmes are more specialised than HA.

Please be aware of the following:

  • The number of students you choose to supervise is up to you as long as your teaching requirements are met and you do not take on more projects than you can handle.
  • Please respond as expediently as possible to all requests from students seeking supervisor, since longer delays can cause the students to contact other supervisors creating confusion and waste of resources.
  • You are not allowed to select/deselect students for supervision based on their grades, GPA or similar.
  • Co-publication with students based on their theses has a number of ethical challenges. Therefore, any talk of publication, sharing of data or collaboration can only take place after the defence. For more information about this, contact Christian Waldstrøm.


More about supervision:

Supervision resources

Just as all students are different from each other, so are we, and there are few restrictions on how we choose to supervise as long as we adhere to the overall guidelines and make ourselves available to them to the extent defined by the norms.  
Therefore, it is impossible (and most likely counterproductive) to create guides that try to encompass all those differences. Below you can find a number of inspirational resources that have been suggested by MGMT colleagues. Please note that these guides are NOT formal MGMT/AU guidelines and should only be used for your own inspiration. If you find discrepancies, always refer to the formal guidelines, most notably the specific course description.

Confidential theses/projects

For some students it will be necessary to sign a confidentiality agreement/NDA when they collaborate with a party outside of Aarhus University. 
This can be either the AU standard confidentiality agreement or a company-specific confidentiality agreement.

These guidelines describe both your role in the process as supervisor and also the students’ obligations:

It is the student's responsibility to ensure that it is concluded and signed well before the submission deadline for an assignment.

Who should sign?
AU standard agreement:
Cand.merc and cand.soc: Lars Esbjerg
HA/BScB: Charlotte Christiansen
ITKO: Anne Ballantyne

Company specific agreement:
Jacob Kjær Eskildsen or Lars Esbjerg – If in doubt please contact Lars Esbjerg for clarification.

More general information about information security:
Confidential theses and projects at AU
Data protection (GDPR) for students 

If you have questions please contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg.

Exams

Preparing exams

Criteria

When you make or change the course description, please ask yourself:

  1. Does the exam (both type and content) truly test the learning objectives of the course?
  2. Does the exam type mean that students unwittingly risk ending up being suspected of cheating/plagiarism?

Guidelines

Furthermore, when you write the exam assignment please consider:

  • Is your exam type (open book/closed book) consistent with the exam questions? E.g., avoid asking students to provide definitions or describe theory in an open book exam.
  • In open book exams, ensure that answers (in whole or in parts) cannot be found online. This will often be the case if you are using cases from textbooks or other sources directly.
  • Please ensure that the course description is updated with the chosen form of examination (Standard examination types) AND please note that if not stated otherwise, the same exam type is used for the retake. Therefore, if you want a different type of exam for the retake, this must be made explicit in the course description.
  • Please note the criteria for referencing in specific programmes – the criteria are available on the study portals. Please also make sure to remind the student of the guidelines. Clarity about this is essential to avoid unnecessary plagiarism cases.
  • Make sure that the complexity of what is required of the students to hand in with regards to e.g. videos, Excel sheets, coding, etc. is considered, as the system has its limitations, and as the students often run into problems with uploading their answers in these cases.
  • Under no circumstance can you reuse the same case and questions from one exam to another. Reusing an exam case between two courses (with different questions!) can be acceptable in certain situations (ask Christian Waldstrøm before doing this). Likewise, in some courses, some questions are integral in testing understanding of core elements of the course, and so are meaningful to recycle between years if put in a different context.

Exam procedure

  • All written exams must be checked by at least one other colleague. If you are two or more lecturers on a course, it is required that more than one person goes through it – for courses with only one lecturer/course responsible, please find a colleague to read through your exam.
  • For written exams in all courses in all programmes, both the regular exam and re-exam are handed in to the study secretary at the same time before the regular exam period.
  • When sending your exams to the responsible study secretary, please note which colleague has checked the exam and CC the relevant programme coordinator. The responsible/coordinator does not need to approve each exam, but is expected to take a look at it and react if need be. If you are yourself the programme coordinator or if your course is an elective or part of several programmes, please send it to Christian Waldstrøm.
  • The deadlines for both sending in exam questions to the study secretary and grading the exams are not suggestions – failure to meet these deadlines creates negative consequences for others, risks compromising quality and creates opportunities for errors.

Marking of exams

Marking of exams must take place before the deadline stated in WISEflow. Delays have a number of adverse effects for both BSS Studies and the students (e.g. timely registration for retakes, trouble with exchange and potential loss of SU).

Procedure for requesting an extension
If extraordinary conditions (e.g. illness) prevent you from correcting the exams that you have agreed to, please email Christian Waldstrøm as soon as possible to figure out possible alternatives. Other deadlines, poor planning, etc. are NOT extraordinary conditions.

If you know in advance that you will have difficulty meeting your obligations, please find colleagues who are willing to help you and inform the relevant study secretary of this, so the WISEflow distribution can be altered. You can use Excelsior to find colleagues with available capacity or ask Christian Waldstrøm or Anne Nisker Toppenberg for help finding resources.  

Assessment of exams
At this link you can get an overview of our 7-point grading scale: the Danish grading scale

Cheating at exams

As a research and teaching institution, we have a zero-tolerance policy towards cheating and plagiarism in exams, and it is part of your teaching responsibilities to be vigilant about this.

Please familiarise yourself with the rules and definitions of cheating at AU and what to do if you encounter cheating at exams: Cheating at exams

All electronically submitted assignments in WISEflow are automatically checked for overlap with other sources by Ouriginal (formerly Urkund) which is integrated into WISEflow. Please note that Ouriginal (formerly Urkund) cannot decide whether there is indeed a case of fraudulent plagiarism, which is why you always need to investigate each instance further.
PLEASE NOTE: If you suspect instances of cheating or plagiarism, please contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg since she has to report all plagiarism cases to Educational Law.

The exam process

This description of the external examiner’s role comes from the secretariat for external examiners of business administration, but the general guidelines apply to all our programmes.

The external examiner's job and duties at exams

Teaching administration

Teaching responsibles

Deputy head of department – Education: Christian Waldstrøm 
Educational consultant: Anne Nisker Toppenberg

Master’s programme coordinators:
Cand.merc.aud.: Frank Thinggaard
Cand.soc. Business Psychology: Christiane Marie Høvring
Commercial and Retail Management: Sascha Steinmann
Digital Business Management: Christiane Marie Høvring
Innovation Management: Helle Alsted Søndergaard
International Business: Ingo Kleindienst
IT, Communication and Organisation: Christian Waldstrøm
Management Accounting and Control: Thomas Kristensen
Marketing Analytics and Strategy: Marco Hubert
Strategic Value Chain Management: Chris Ellegaard 
Strategy, Organisation and Leadership: Mona Toft Madsen

Summer University coordinator:
Mai Skjøtt Linneberg

Programme coordinators HD:
HD (O): Ann-Kristina Løkke Møller
HD (B): Ann-Kristina Løkke Møller
HD (R): Claus Holm
HD Part 1: ECON

Director of studies (studieleder) CM:
Lars Esbjerg

Heads of studies (studieledere):
ITKO: Anne Gammelgaard Ballantyne (BTECH)
MIT: Lise Tordrup
MBA: Kristina Risom Jespersen (ECON)
HD: Michael Christensen (ECON)

Get an overview of study secretaries here

Registering teaching activities

All logging is done here: 
https://mgmt.excelsior.nu/login.

All VIPs are responsible for keeping their Excelsior data as updated as possible: This means having a reasonably precise budget for the current/next year and ensuring the correctness of the registrations for past years.
If you need an introduction or further assistance, please contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg or Merete Elmann.

Deficit and surplus
All teaching deficit and surplus is transferred to the following year’s budget. Large year-on-year deficits or surpluses are not necessarily a problem as there might be good reasons for them (e.g. saving for sabbatical). However, teachers whose budgets show a continuing deficit or surplus should contact the heads of programme and/or their head of section to find a solution. If you have trouble finding enough teaching – or need help getting rid of an amassed surplus - please contact Christian Waldstrøm or Anne Nisker Toppenberg.

Illness
If you are ill for more than four weeks in a row we will adjust Excelsior accordingly. Within four weeks of your first day of absence you will have a sickness absence interview, and the illness will thus be considered long-term. Please contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg regarding this.

Excelsior – who does what?

  • Recurring teaching and exam activities are adjusted by academic staff based on the budget drawn up by Anne Nisker Toppenberg and Merete Elmann.
  • New teaching and exam activities are entered into Excelsior by academic staff - assisted by Anne Nisker Toppenberg or Merete Elmann if necessary.
  • Various kinds of theses are entered into Excelsior by Anne Nisker Toppenberg and Merete Elmann and checked by academic staff. Please make sure to notify Merete and Anne if one of your students postpone their submission, fail to submit etc.
  • Administrative activities and norm adjustments are entered into Excelsior by Anne Nisker Toppenberg.

Norms for teaching

Here is an overview of all teaching norms including compound norms and capacity reductions:


Category and hours/year

  • Professor and associate professor: 840
  • Assistant professor: 840
  • PhD student: 840 (over three years)
  • Senior researcher, postdoc and research assistant: By agreement with head of department depending on funding – please contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg


Development of new course or major changes to existing course
If you develop a new course, you will receive 90 hours for your work. If the course is an elective that ends up not running, you will receive 30 hours for development.
If you take over a course – or part of a course – you will receive hours for development according to how much of the course you have taken over and the amount of time you have spent.
To have the hours added to Excelsior, please contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg

Guidelines for guest lecturers

Gift 
We have books from the series Tænkepauser/Reflections in stock, and it is possible to give a guest three of those as a way to say thank you for their time. Please contact the study secretary to get hold of them.  

Salary 
If the guest lecturer covers a part of the curriculum, we can give them salary equivalent to an external teacher. Please note that when you have a guest lecturer to whom we pay a salary, you need to adjust the hours in Excelsior from Lecture to Attendance. 

Travel 
As a rule, we do not cover travel expenses for guest lecturers. Consider getting your guest lecturers to do online presentations as an alternative.  

Teaching outside MGMT

Those who wish to take on teaching or supervision at other BSS departments or AU faculties, and who want to have their workload included in their annual norm and logged in Excelsior, must obtain the department’s pre-approval before entering into an agreement.  It needs to be assessed whether there are non-allocated teaching activities which would be more advantageous to have the teacher cover before teaching at other departments or faculties, and furthermore, there must be an agreement with the other department about the financial side. Please send your request to Anne Nisker Toppenberg.

Teaching activities outside AU are not included in the annual norm and consequently not registered in Excelsior. The teacher must negotiate payment with the institution him/herself. Please familiarise yourself with the AU Staff Policy on other paid employment: Staff Policy

For activities with the purpose of branding AU to potential new students and similar activities, please consult with Christian Waldstrøm or Anne Nisker Toppenberg.

Buyout from teaching

Projects with external funding can include the possibility of buy out from teaching. If you want buyout you have to contact Anne Nisker Toppenberg in advance.

The buyout is based on an amount in the project’s budget and the hourly rate of the relevant employee. The hourly rate is either defined in the project or based on the actual salary of the employee.

In general, the employee must buy themselves out from research as well as teaching. E.g. if the buyout covers the entire salary for one month, the reduction in Excelsior will be 70 hours (840 hours/12).