How do I find courses?

NOTE: with WS 2018/19, RWTH Aachen University switched from "Campus" to "RWTHonline" as Campus Management System. If you want to have a look to courses offered in SS 2018 or earlier, please refer to the Campus system.

To look at courses offered from WS 2018/19 on, please log in into RWTHOnline. If you do not have any login data yet, click the button "continue without login". Afterwards, chosse "Courses". To get an overview on offered courses, select the appropriate semester and a curriculum.

Which curriculum to choose? We are offering several study programs:

• One Bachelor study program: “Informatik [2018], Bachelor 1 Fach”
• Four Master study programs: “Informatik [2009], Master 1 Fach”, “Data Science [2018], Master 1 Fach”, “Software Systems Engineering [2011], Master 1 Fach”, and “Media Informatics [2005], Master 1 Fach”.

Please just ignore the "[20xy] 1 Fach", it just expesses the current examination regulations for our local students.

Note that many courses of the three Master study programs are identical. Thus you can restrict to Master “Informatik” to get an almost complete overview about offered courses, including minors, i.e. some courses from other study fields which our students can take. If you want to restrict to only Computer science courses, choose “Software Systems Engineering” to get a better overview.

Furthermore note that the electives in our Bachelor study program are a mostly subset of the courses offered in the Master programs - if you are only interested in courses taught in English, it is sufficient to have a look into the Master study programs. Independent of the study level you are coming here for, you are free to choose from all our study programs. Just make sure with your home university that the chosen courses can be accepted. If you are also interested in courses taught in German, you can also have a look at the obligatory courses in the Bachelor study program.

Pay attention when selecting courses from Media Informatics: Some of them are taught at University of Bonn – besides at least two hour of travel time by train and bus, access to courses in Bonn cannot be guaranteed.

If you want to search for courses in coming semesters, note that the course list for a semster is published only about three month before the semester starts. For planning a course list for your stay in advance (e.g. to set up a first learning agreement), please have a look at the previous semesters. Most courses are offered once a year, so you get a good approximation of the coming winter semester by having a look at the previous winter semester, and for the coming summer semester by having a look to the previous summer semester. To do so, you might have to use the Campus system.

Only relevant if you have to use the Campus system: In Campus, first of all make sure that in the switchbox at the top right corner the correct semester is selected. If not, switch it to the semester you want to have a look at. After having switched to the correct semester, in the left side menu access “Studiengänge”. In the main window, you now get listed an overview about all types of degrees our university offers. Here, choose “Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)” or “Master of Science (M.Sc.)” - after doing so, the system lists all corresponding study programs. As above, you might restrict to "Informatik (M.Sc.)". It might be a bit confusing that for many courses there are two, three or even four entries in the Campus system. all these entries belog to only one course, but represent different parts of it - a lecture (have a look into the last column on the web page: there is a "V" for "Vorlesung" - lecture), an exercise ("Ü" for "Übung" which means exercise), and an exam ("Kl" for "Klausur" which means written exam, or "MP" for "mündliche Prüfung" which is an oral exam). Unfortunately, most information in the Campus System is in German – you can browse courses, but how to get a description in English language? Such a description is available in another section of Campus, available in the left-side menu: “Modulhandbücher” (module handbooks). Select this menu entry and search for “BSInf” or “MSInf”. At the far end of the found row you find a description of all modules in rtf format (here are direct links to the module handbook RTF documents for Bachelor and Master of Computer Science). You can match courses between “Studiengänge” and “Modulhandbücher” by their course code (e.g. BSInf-55204102/10).

Seminars and labs

Most courses you can access without restrictions. Only a few have a restricted number of places. In such cases you should register soon after the semester has started if you like to participate.

If you are interested in attending a seminar or a lab, please note:

• Places in seminars and labs are always restricted. No participation is guaranteed! You have to aply for places in advance.
• The places are assigned during certain times: end of June / beginning of July, places for winter semester are assigned. Mid of January, places for summer semester are assigned. Application for places during these times is possible via this portal. To get access to this portal, contact us.
• Seminars and labs for winter semester might start in August, for summer semester they might start in February. Please consider these times when planning your stay, or get into contact with supervisors of seminars/labs early to get further information.

Thesis work

In general, exchange students can do a Bachelor or Master thesis during their stay at RWTH Aachen University. But, no thesis topics are guaranteed! You have to find a supvervisor/topic in the Computer Science Department by yourself. Only if you can provide an acceptance letter of one of our professors, you can include a thesis in your learning agreement.

If you are interested in doing a thesis: there is no central list of available topics. Just browse the list of research groups and contact the groups which are of interest for you to ask for possibilities in doing a thesis.

Access to courses of other faculties

In general, you can also have a look to all other study programs of our university. But, we cannot guarantee access to courses outside of the Computer Science department. If you are interested in courses of other faculties/departments, please contact us soon to check if a certain course in general is open for Computer Science exchange students.