Students may want to take more than one course of the same type. In this case, one course generally takes place within the context of the degree program and additional courses are taken out of an interest in the subject.

As a rule, students in the history degree programs can register for courses not stipulated in the applicable examination regulations via the “Lehrangebot Geschichte”. These do not count toward the degree you are enrolled in, resulting in what is basically an audit of the class without necessitating formal registration as an auditor. [The distribution of places is subject to the availability of places in the corresponding course.] However, if you already have a confirmed registration for an introductory seminar in Modern History, JOGU-StINe currently does not allow you to register for another introductory seminar in Modern History in the same semester, whether through module registration, the “Lehrangebot Geschichte”, or regular registration as an auditor. Instead, JOGU-StINe will ask you to deregister from the course you are already enrolled in before it allows you to register for a new course. This is because courses offered multiple times are currently, as a rule, combined into a single registration group in order to achieve a reasonably even distribution and ensure that as many students as possible are able to secure a spot — specifically in a course that matches their preference as closely as possible. (does this still apply?)

This results in students not being able to take additional courses simply out of interest. At the moment, this technical issue still remains. It has been reported to the company that developed JOGU-StINe.

However, we would like to make it possible for all students who are interested and motivated enough to take an additional course without requiring the corresponding course certificate to do so even if that means bypassing JOGU-StINe (depending on the course’s capacity).

If you are interested in taking a specific course, please send an email to Andreas Frings, afrings@uni-mainz.de (Study Management) including the course name, your name, and your student ID number. If the course still has capacity, the student advising office will register you as an auditor.

You must register for an elective area in the following degree programs:

• B.A. History (major and minor): You must register for an elective area as you must take a practice class either in Module 5 (Modern History, 19th/20th century; generally in your first year of study) or in Module 4 (Early Modern History, 16th to 19th century; generally in your second year of study). Both modules include a lecture and an introductory seminar, but you can choose which module to take the practice class in. You can make this decision based on your schedule or area of interest, for example.
• M.Ed. History: You must decide which epoch you want to take the epochal advanced module in; you will then take the research module’s graduate seminars in the other two epochs offered in the master’s degree program.
• M.A. History: You must decide whether to study history in general or with an epoch-based or regional focus.

Before you can register for Module 5 or Module 4, you must first select “Modules/Courses”, then “Elective areas”, and finally “Elective area registration”. You will then be shown your previous selection:

When you click on the “Choose areas” button, you can choose between the module areas “Module 5 without practice class and Module 4 with practice class” or “Module 5 with practice class and Module 4 without practice class” and save your selection:

Once you save your choice, you can return to the regular “Module/Course registration” window; a link to “Modern/Early Modern History” will now be above the box containing the modules and their corresponding courses. This link leads to the chosen elective area and the corresponding modules (4 and 5).

If you register for modules and courses in the main registration period prior to your first semester in the master’s degree program, you will also need to choose the elective area. You can do this as soon as you are enrolled in the master’s degree program. However, you will not be able to see the elective area you chose, as the visibility of the elective area depends on the enrollment date, meaning you will only be able to see the elective area starting on September 1/April 1. Nevertheless, your elective area registration is valid and permits you to register for modules and courses.

The allocation of spots via JOGU-StINe tends to cause confusion: You didn’t get a spot in the seminar you actually wanted or are even registered for a seminar that you did not sign up for; and often JOGU-StINe is made responsible. While there is an element of truth to this – in the Department of History, the allocation of spots takes place solely via JOGU-StINe – there is a reason for how the spots are distributed.

A “wrong” allocation, for example, may result from having signed up for only three of 20 seminars in a registration group – but JOGU-StINe distributes spots one at a time across all seminars, and perhaps there were no more open spots in the three seminars you signed up for when it was your turn. In the past, you simply would not have gotten a seminar spot at all, but now JOGU-StINe at least secures a spot for you in a seminar, even if it is not one you registered for. If you do not want to accept the registration, you can simply deregister from the course during the next JOGU-StINe phrase. You can deregister in all registration periods and in the deregistration phase. In the bachelor’s degree program, you can only register for other seminars once you complete the deregistration process for the seminar you do not want to take. Past experience has shown that most seminars have some students who deregister due to scheduling issues, so it is not impossible to find spots. However, you can also accept the spot in the course JOGU-StINe registered you for.

Why are courses put in registration groups? This is the only way we can ensure JOGU-StINe distributes participants across all courses of the same type – a necessity due to capacity limitations. For courses with limited capacity, we refer to the corresponding Senate guideline, which is also how JOGU-StINe allocates spots. In addition, JOGU-StINe operates using a random factor. This only comes into play if the number of registrations for a course exceeds the maximum number of participants.

The student advising office cannot influence the allocation of spots through JOGU-StINe. It therefore makes little sense to ask the student advising office to retroactively make changes to the allocated seminar spots. Only in cases of hardship – for example, if students cannot access a seminar room due to a physical disability or for other exceptional reasons (e.g., if childcare is hard to come by and thus time at the university is constrained) – can the student advising office assign individual spots manually. We also offer a manual allocation of spots for all students who are not guided by examination regulations (mainly ERASMUS and other exchange students) or who must study according to other degree plans (such as participants in the Dijon program) and therefore face particularly difficult conditions when it comes to coordinating courses. In all other cases, we will refer you to the usual channels for the registration and allocation of spots.

One last question: How does the student advising office handle courses with too many or too few participants? If there are too many registrations for a course, we try our best to increase the number of possible participants (depending on the room situation) and to organize additional courses of the same type. If a course has a very small number of participants, the course will usually still take place; only in extreme cases will it be canceled and the teaching staff member asked to teach a course that is more in demand.