Good feedback is not the responsibility of lecturers alone. That was the main message of a lecture and workshop on feedback held by professor David Boud from the University of Technology in Sydney on Tuesday. A message that resonated with Assistant Professor Anders Damsgaard from the Department of Geoscience, who participated in both the lecture and the workshop.

On 1 February, Kristian Thorn will take up the position of university director at AU. He has a long history at the university, which started in the 90s as a political science student. Now he will use his experience to lead AU through a difficult financial period while focusing on strengthening collaboration across the university.

Since the ChatGPT was introduced in November, it has astonished the world with its artificial intelligence. Among many other feats, it can write academic papers in just seconds, and the question facing universities now is how to react, and whether artificial intelligence is a challenge or an opportunity.

AU’s new board chair Birgitte Nauntofte took her seat at the head of the table just as the university posted a preliminary budget shortfall of several hundred million kroner. Nauntofte stresses the seriousness of the situation while at the same time stressing that the shortfall is primarily caused by factors outside the university’s control. She also rejects the suggestion that the university’s investment policies might bear some of the blame.

For the first time since 2019, the university chaplains can invite students to a Christmas Eve celebration with no public-health restrictions. All students – Danish and international – are welcome to an evening of traditional Danish Christmas hygge with all the trimmings, from mulled wine to dancing around the Christmas tree.

Last week, eight employees at the Danish School of Education were told by management that they were under consideration for redundancy. Another eight employees have already accepted a voluntary redundancy package, while three employees have resigned. This comes after the Danish School of Education announced cutbacks and a savings requirement of DKK 15 million in the autumn. “The redundancies are a disaster, and everyone is affected by them,” says Bjørg Kjær, joint union representative for academic staff.

Aarhus University is launching a new campaign to help prevent exam cheating. In 2021, there were 207 cases of exam cheating at AU, while there have been 117 cases so far in 2022. Media science student Jacob Siggaard Rygård knows what it is like to be caught cheating. By mistake, he handed in the wrong exam paper. It set off a lengthy process.

Twitter is popular among researchers, but with Elon Musk’s takeover, many are now asking whether they should stay or migrate from the social media platform. Media researcher at AU Jesper Tække believes that Elon Musk has underestimated what it takes to run Twitter but that researchers with several followers will cut the platform some slack. The researcher behind the profile AUforsker, Lone Koefoed Hansen, thinks it’s too early to tell.

Russian Studies at AU looks very different today than it did eight months ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine. There is more solidarity, the syllabus has changed, and the exchange programme to Russia has been replaced with a study abroad period in Latvia. In this article, students and lecturers explain their new academic reality on the programme.

Although faculties are busy dealing with inflation, the energy crisis and declining numbers of school leavers – and political initiatives – this must not be at the expense of our work and study environment, claims Dean of Health Anne-Mette Hvas in her Omnibus column.