FAQ: Frequently asked questions and recurring problems

Your e-mail address cannot be changed in OpenOlat. If necessary, you can check your primary ID  in the RRZ user administration.

To do this, navigate to your account in the top right corner and then click on the profile configurations.

All the other course members can also see your profile picture.

Only people with course owner status can view the statistics.

You can change the language to English. To do this, navigate to account configurations and then to System tab.

In the settings of the course element, set the source to be hidden. This usually solves the problem.

If a course participant has completed a form, you can view the results directly in the course element. This applies to all form types.

You have probably created the Zoom meeting in the Zoom client and not directly in OpenOlat. In this case, use the import function of the Zoom course element.

With a link list, you can make several pages available at the same time. With the External page course element, on the other hand, you integrate a single website into OpenOlat. Depending on the teaching and learning scenario you are pursuing, one or the other course element may be more suitable.

You do not need to apply to install plugins in OnlyOffice. To install a plugin, click on Plugins at the top of the tab and select the desired plugin. It may be that certain plugins need to be reinstalled for each file.

OnlyOffice saves automatically after each change entered. If you want to download a local file, you can do this above under File. You can also download an OnlyOffice Word file as a PDF file, for example.

Currently, a link list can only be edited by course owners or supervisors.

If you upload files in the course element folder, all course members can view and download them.

The very extensive help area is integrated directly into OnlyOffice. This comes directly from OnlyOffice and is updated regularly. To get there, click on File in the top left-hand corner of OnlyOffice. This will take you directly to the help area. There are program-specific help offers for Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

The course element folder is limited to 1.5 GB upload limit. A file can have a maximum size of 512 MB. The number of files is not limited and depends on the total upload limit. If you require more storage space for a folder course element, please contact us.

For the use of Zoom at the University of Hamburg, the installation of the Zoom software is strongly recommended. Further information can be found on this page of the RRZ.

You can set in the metadata of a file that editing, moving or deleting files by other people is blocked.

Teilnehmende eines Kurses erhalten automatischen Benachrichtigungen per E-Mai, wenn der Kursbaustein abonniert wurde. Mehr dazu können Sie in der HelpCard 20-070 nachlesen. Der Kursbaustein „Forum“ wird in der Regel beim ersten Anklicken des Kursbausteins automatisch abonniert.

Course participants do not automatically receive an E-mail when new messages are sent. Participants must subscribe to the course element in order to be informed about current messages in the relevant courses. Otherwise, you must actively follow the news in the “Notifications” course element. The course element “Notifications” is usually subscribed to automatically the first time the course element is clicked on. To ensure that the message actually arrives in the participant's E-mail inbox, it is essential to click on “Next” in the notifications menu and then select the “Subscription & E-mail” option. There you can also see how many participants have subscribed to the course element. Only then will an email with the new message be sent to the email addresses of the course participants. You can read more about it on this page.

If the “Authoring area” button is not displayed, you first need author rights. In this case, please contact support at UHH.E-HUL.DLL.OLAT@uni-hamburg.de. However, these are normally assigned automatically to all employees, including students.

The message will be sent to the e-mail address stored in OpenOlat. If you have logged in with your UHH user name (“B-Kennung”/STiNE ID), the “@uni-hamburg.de” or “@studium.uni-hamburg.de” address will be used.

The procedure for creating a course based on a course template is explained in  HelpCard 10-010: „Kurszugriff konfigurieren“ (In German) on the DL-portal page.

A list of available course templates can be found here directly in OpenOlat.

You can convert your created (conventional) course into a learning path at any time.  Unfortunately, however, it is not possible to convert a learning path course into a conventional course.

By using the “Enrollment” course element, participants have the opportunity to enroll in groups independently. This is particularly useful if there are many participants or if the decision about which group to join should be left to the participants themselves. In addition, it can be used to enable the assignment of seminar topics by self-registration into the appropriate group. You can use the configuration of the course element to determine which group(s) the course participants can enroll in.

If you are assigned to the course, you have the opportunity to see the group rooms.

Creating a group ist useful for students and lecturers alike. You can find instructions on how to create a group in the OpenOlat manual under “Create groups” .

Further interesting information on group work can be found on this page of the DL portal (In German).

You can also add the group members manually in the administration of the group under “Members”. To do this, you need the name or matriculation number/e-mail/“B-Kennung” of the person, which you can enter under “Add member/members”.

Under the Administration menu field in the “Members” tab, participants can be added and removed and group roles can be assigned. This must be defined by the course or group administrator.

Within a group, a distinction can be made between group supervisors and group participants. A maintainer can administer the group, i.e:

add members
appoint members as supervisors
delete the group
make settings
activate tools
Group participants, on the other hand, do not have these rights and can only write posts in the activated areas.

Further information on group management can be found in the OpenOlat manual.

If students do not appear in the participant list of the OpenOlat course, there may be several reasons for this:

1. If all students are missing, the course ID may have been entered incorrectly. It is best to check this again in the course settings (top right in the ribbon in the relevant course under “configurations”).
2. In order to be entered automatically, all students must have initially registered in OpenOlat to create an account. Only then they will be enrolled into the course (even retrospectively).
3. Synchronization with the STiNE registration list always takes place on the hour, and students only appear in the list of participants after they have logged into OpenOlat again.

You can archive the OpenOlat course at the end of the semester. To do this, select the corresponding status in the bar at the top. You can find an overview of the different statuses here in the “OpenOlat-Rundgang”.

You can only import course elements. To do this, always go to the course into which you want to import a course element and then select “Import course elements” in the course editor.

You can access the course editor by opening the Administration menu at the top left and then clicking on Course editor. If this option is not available, please check whether you have changed your user role. The course editor is only displayed to users with the status “Course owner”.

To remove individual course members manually, go to the member administration and select “Remove” to the right of the member name under the three dots for further options. In addition, the STiNE course ID must be removed from the course information again, otherwise the STiNE connection will add the participants again. All course members who were in the course at this point will remain listed.

To automatically add students from the registration lists of several STiNE courses to your course, enter two course IDs in the “Indicator” field according to these instructions and separate them with a comma without a space.

This procedure could be useful, for example, if you want to provide general useful information for several courses in the OpenOlat course or if you want to map parallel events on the same topic in an OpenOlat course.

To download several files at once, first activate the checkbox on the left. You will then be offered the option of downloading at the top. If you want to perform a bulk download, you must activate the top red checkbox.

You can manage all your learning resources in the My entries authoring area. By selecting the box in front of the selected learning resource, the functions Copy and Delete will appear.

This is a known bug that is currently being worked on. Until then, there is an alternative way to work around this error message. You can also press the “Reset all data” button in the course element in order to be able to successfully press “Edit learning resource” in the configuration menu.