Important documents about your studies - explained quickly

Important documents about your studies

Or: What are examination regulations, what do I need them for, and where can I even find them?

Your studies are governed by a set of rules. These rules are written down in a number of regulations, which have been created by the university and were then released as official notifications ("Amtliche Mitteilung"). The regulations define, for example, which kinds of credit can be obtained and how, how deadlines and retakes work, and so on.

The most important thing here is: As much as the university and its teachers depend on you following those rules, you can also depend on the university to follow them as well. Regulations are here to create clarity and mutual accountability. This is why it is important for you to know the regulations relevant to you!

There is a number of different types of regulations:
Framework Examination Regulations ("Rahmenprüfungsordnungen (RPO)") are overarching regulations of Universität Siegen. They define many basic rules that are applied in all courses of study.
General Faculty Examination Regulations ("Allgemeine fachspezifische Regelungen (PHIL-RPO)") are overarching regulations of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. It, for example, defines the study models or if and how exams may be retaken.
Subject-Specific Examination Regulations ("Fachprüfungsordnungen (FPO)") define the individual courses of study. They describe the courses of study and other specific regulations in detail.
In addition to this, some regulations may need to be changed or corrected over time. These changes can be found in Changes/Corrections to the Examination Regulations ("Änderungsordnung", "Ordnung zur Berichtigung"). They always have to be considered together with the regulations they are based on.
Regulations and their supplements are then often combined into Reading Versions ("Lesefassung") to be more comprehensible.
In sum, there are a number of documents that are relevant to you. However, the Subject-Specific Examination Regulations ("Fachprüfungsordnung") have the most impact on the organisation of your studies.

In many cases, there are multiple versions of regulations for the same course of studies which are relevant to different "generations" of students. To find out which regulations and other documents are relevant to you, you need to know the following:
What are you studying, and when did you start (or change)?
This may sound simple, but the relevant information is often somewhat hidden in the regulations. The date on the cover, for example, has nothing to do with it. In addition, some documents are valid for all generations of studients, some are not.

To make this a little bit simpler for you, we created the search form phil: Docs. Here you can enter your course of studies and when you started. Afterwards, only documents relevant to you according to the data you entered will be shown to you. However, you should still look over the documents carefully, since some exceptions and transitionary rules may apply and are explained in the text.

We hope that this video was helpful to you. If anything is unclear of if you have questions, feel free to contact our study counselors.