FAQs - für Studierende und Gasthörende / for students and guest students

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Auf Deutsch:




ILIAS (Integriertes Lern-, Informations- und Arbeitskooperations-System [German for "Integrated Learning, Information and Work Cooperation System"]) is the central E-learning-platform of the University of Cologne. Not only is it a Content-Management-System, but also a communication tool.
 
! Hint: You have to register for courses via KLIPS and not ILIAS. Once you registered successfully and got a place you will automatically receive a place in the equivalent ILIAS course. Please keep in mind, that not all lecturers grant access to course materials via ILIAS.
 
What is ILIAS able to provide?
 
  • You can get access to learning materials of your lecturer’s courses (presentations, external sources, power point files etc.)
  • Various tools, e.g. learning modules, wikis, portfolios, blogs, tests etc.
  • Ways to communicate with other students via the ILIAS internal messaging system like forums, chats, or virtual classrooms
You are able to get access with your student-/ or guest account. Please keep in mind that it is not possible to use ILIAS without an account. Students request their student account by contacting the data center of the University of Cologne (RRZK).
As a student or guest student you have to log into your ILIAS account which has been provided to you by the data center (RRZK). You will receive the password after your matriculation.
 
Activate your account by accepting the terms of use when you log in for the first time. Please complete your personal data and save. Your account will be available immediately after saving.
 
If you lost your PIN (which is required for activating your account the first time) you need to contact the data center (RRZK) in order to acquire a new PIN.
 
Additional information about activation and registration of your account can be found on the website of the data center:
Activation of your student account
Please follow this manual of the Identity management of the University of Cologne (uniKIM) in order to reset your password.
 
! Hint: Changing the password applies to ILIAS, KLIPS and Webmail.

While the creation of your personnel account the identity management of the RRZK will generate a name for your account. This name mostly is a combination of your family name and the first letter of your first name. Use this combination to log into ILIAS. If you know your webmail account, your username can be read as follows: jdoe1@uni-koeln.de your username therefore is jdoe1.
The personnel accounts are managed by the identity-management-system administrated via the RRZK. If any problem with your account occurs, e.g. you forgot your username, you need to contact the RRZK-Helpdesk.

Your ILIAS password runs through your personnel account. The personnel accounts are managed by an identity-management-system via the RRZK. Unfortunately, we are not able to look up or change your password. If a change is necessary you can change or reset it via the RRZK´s identity-management-system.

You enter your correct username and password but cannot log in? Or you receive the notification “authentication was not possible because of a log in error (LDAP)” („Die Authentifizierung konnte wegen eines Fehlers im Anmeldungsverfahren (LDAP) nicht durchgeführt werden“?)
Mostly Apple users are affected by this notification, especially in combination with Safari. A browser change to Chrome, Mozilla or Edge was able to solve the problem in some cases. Additionally, delete old cookies in your browser.

  1. Delete old cookies from your browser.
  2. Update your browser.
  3. Try to log in again.
If you are still not able to log in please send a support request.

If you are registered in a KLIPS course/ group, you will automatically be added to the group/course within the next day.
However, this only applies to the current semester. If this happened to a course/group of an older semester, please contact your lecturer/ the admin of the course. Only the lecturer/admin can decide to add you back into it, or not.
The course membership in ILIAS is connected to your status in KLIPS. Nevertheless, your lecturers are able to add you into ILIAS courses as guests, but as soon as your status has been changed to a different role than “registered” (e.g. “applied to”, or “declined”) you will be automatically removed over night.
In this case your status in KLIPS has to be accommodated. Please, contact your lecturer who can decide if you can get registered for the equivalent course in KLIPS.
If you are registered in KLIPS, but are still regularly removed within ILIAS, please contact us by writing an E-mail to contact form . Please insert your username, as well as the title and the KLIPS course number of your course.
All ILIAS courses and groups without the equivalent KLIPS courses are able to be identified via the path in ILIAS:
Courses without a KLIPS equivalent are to be found under “Repository” > “Veranstaltungen” > “Fakultät X/Y” (Faculty X/Y).
! Hint: If you are not able to register for the course yourself you have to contact your lecturer. Only your lecturer can decide if you can be a participant, or not.
It is the lecturer’s decision if guest students can be added to the course. This is the only way to secure intellectual property of the lecturer or originator.  
As a guest student, please ask your lecturer if you can be added to the seminar. They have the necessary permission and knowhow to add you to the seminar.
You can find available classes of the University of Bonn here.
 
Please note: You will receive the password for the class only by the lecturers themselves.
All ILIAS-classes of the University of Cologne that are available for students of Bonn are located in the eCampus of the University of Bonn.
 
You can find these classes within the category classes of the University of Cologne classes of the University of Cologne.
 
Please note: You will receive the password for the class by the lecturer himself in most cases.
 
If you, as a student of the University of Bonn, have problems with the registration for ILIAS-classes please contact the HRZ Helpdesk first. Your student account is located in the central administration of the eCampus Bonn.
If you are already registered in a course, you will be added the following day as a member, or at the end of the enrollment phase, respectively. Many courses are offline at the beginning of the semester and need to be set online by the administrating lecturers. Therefore, please wait until the second week of the term in order to contact your lecturers.
 
You can find all semester appointsments here: Homepage Studierendensekretariats.
 
If you did not gain access to online available courses, please contact us via e-Mail at ilias-helpdesk@uni-koeln.de. Please make sure to state your username, the course number(s), and the title of the course/lecture.
The freshmen student accounts will be activated at the official start of the term. For the summer term it is April 1st and for the winter term it is October 1st . You can register for classes via KLIPS, however, you will automatically be added to the ILIAS-course after the official start of the term.
 
Moreover: At the beginning of the term many ILIAS-courses are offline and need to be set online by the lecturers. If you have access to a number of courses on your personal desktop and still miss other courses, please contact your lecturers in the second week of the term. If you did not gain access to online available courses, please contact us via e-Mail at ilias-helpdesk@uni-koeln.de. Please make sure to state your username, the course number(s), and the title of the course/lecture.
Please contact your lecturer directly, who will then decide whether an access for the class is possible.
Many ILIAS-courses are offline at the start of the term. The lecturer decides whether an entry to the class is still possible. Please directly contact your lecturer.
You can use the search option to find courses. You can find the search option in the top right corner in form of a magnifying glass next to the log-out and mail functions.
You can narrow down your search if you set the filter type to “courses”. Here you will only find courses which are set online.

Alternatively you can find under “magazine > organization“, courses of all terms. Via the course catalogue you can browse through the desired course.
If you are registered in a course of the current semester in KLIPS 2 you will automatically be added every time if you left the ILIAS course. As long as you are registered in KLIPS you cannot be deregistered in the corresponding ILIAS course. You can only take the course off your personal desktop (see 4.3).
To leave the ILIAS course you need to unsubscribe in KLIPS 2 from the class.
Click on the tab “personal desktop” to open the drop down menu. Choose the option “overview”. Select the blue drop down menu and choose the option „remove from desktop“.
No. Due to adjustments to all electronic systems of the University of Cologne it is prohibited to use a private email address in ILIAS. New accounts will automatically be registered with the Smail addresses. Old accounts will gradually be replaced with current Smail addresses.
Forwarding emails is only possible through your Smail account in Webmail. If you want to forward your messages you need to setup a redirection in your Webmail account.
Various reasons can cause that you do not receive emails in ILIAS. In most cases it is not a technical issue.


Please check your Webmail inbox first. If you have an old ILIAS account were you were able to change your email address please check the old address first. To look up which inbox is connected with your ILIAS account select the option personal data and profile in your personal desktop. Now select Mail.


If you use the ILIAS message system correctly but your communication partner is using redirections to a private address, the communication will not work properly. If your communication partner is answering your message from his or her private email address, the answer will not be sent in ILIAS. In this case the aforementioned communication dialogue will leave the ILIAS message system. Please make sure that your ILIAS account is connected with your email address you are using for ILIAS to prevent misunderstandings.


It may happen that lecturers want to send mails to all course or group members but unconsciously do not select all members. The first page of the member gallery only shows 20 members by default and it happens that only the first 20 members receive the message. Please ask your lecturer if he or she made sure to select all members of the course. If you cannot find the message in your post box even though the approach by the sender was correct, please contact us via mail ilias-helpdesk@uni-koeln.de.  
For WINDOWS 10:
  1. Navigate to the object which you want to create as a web folder.
  2. Click on the blue button “actions” on the upper right side of the page.
  3. Select “open as web folder”.
  4. ILIAS opens a new tab containing this manual:
  5. Copy the link “https://www.ilias.uni-koeln.de/ilias/webdav.php/uk/ref_xxxxxxx/" (”xxxx”, since the number behind “ref_” always varies.)
  6. Open the Windows Explorer.
  7. Paste the previously copied link into the path of the Windows Explorer and press “Enter”.
  8. A small window pops up. Please enter your ILIAS login data.
  9. The web folder of your object is opened in Windows Explorer.
  10. Copy the folder and the data structure into the window of the Explorer.
WINDOWS 7 and 8:
Windows 7 and 8 sometimes deny access to the web folder. Therefore, we suggest you to follow these steps in ILIAS:
  1. Select the small button right next to the folder, in order to connect it as a web-folder: “->Action -> Open as web-folder”.
  2. Copy the complete URL in the text.
  3. Open the explorer with the key combination [Win] and [E] and choose “connect Network drive”.
  4. Copy the address into the bar “folder”.
  5. Navigate to the beginning of the address and delete the “https://” section. Instead put two backslashes (with the key combination [Alt Gr] and [ß or ?]).
  6. Paste “@SSL“ behind the segment “uni-koeln.de”.
  7. You address is going to look like:
    \\www.ilias.uni-koeln.de@SSL/ilias/webdav.php/uk/ref_.....
  8. Tick off the checkbox “Reconnect at logon”.
  9. Go to “Complete/Finish”.
Your network folder will now be displayed under network addresses in the Windows Explorer.
Please make sure that your browser is not blocking specific content due to security risks: 
 
Furthermore it is important to update your browser to the newest version. 
 
If there are any problems regarding lecture recordings provided by the server “Opencast Matterhorn“ consider to delete cache and cookies, try a different browser. If problems continue to exist after switching browsers, please contact opencast@uni-koeln.de
 
If other problems occur please send us an email to ilias-helpdesk@uni-koeln.de
As stated in the terms of use, you are only allowed to enable others access to content to which you own the rights to use. As soon as the content is external material it has to be verified. Here you can find an overview about the legal status of the copyright. There is further information about teaching and the submission of media in ILIAS available too.
 
If you have any questions, please contact us via elearning-ilias@uni-koeln.de. Please explain us which kind of media you want to use and respectively if you own or use a copyrighted license. We give you an assessment and respectively forward you to an expert of the UzK.
If you previously used Drag & Drop in order to upload data, please use the command right below it instead: “Choose a file from your computer“. The maximum file size is limited to 600 MB.
If the problem continues to exist we suggest you to use a different browser (e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer). The maximum file size is limited to 600 MB too.
!Hint: If your file is always renamed into “.sec“ it is because of a “security update“. Common and safety-related credible file formats like “.docx“, “.pptx“ or “.pdf.“ can be downloaded without any problems. File formats like “.iso“ can still be downloaded, but are changed into the “.sec.“ format within ILIAS (please refer to segment 8.6).
After the hack on the Federal Government the developers of ILIAS have revised the security measures of the system. Especially executing files (e.g. “.exe“, “iso“ etc.) pose a threat to an e-learning platform. Therefore we had to do a “security update“. Common and safety-related credible file formats like “.docx“, “.pptx“ or “.pdf.“ can be downloaded without any problems. File formats like “.iso“ can still be downloaded, but are changed into the “.sec.“ format within ILIAS. The file cannot be opened in ILIAS as a .sec and therefore is not a threat to the e-learning platform.
Of course you are allowed to send your file(s) to us. After receiving them we contact the developers of ILIAS and clarify if your file format is a threat to the system. If your file format is perceived as not being harmful we can take it down from our blacklist. Once it has been taken down your file can be uploaded.
As mentioned before the “.sec“ ending only stops the file from operating within ILIAS. Your students are able to download the file and use it if they rename the ending. An example via an “iso“-file would be: Change the ending of the file “XXX.sec“ into “XXX.iso“. Alternatively, you are can change it into a .zip file in order to upload it. After downloading the zip file it only has to be extracted in order to be used.
Please note that files containing any special characters [e.g. “Ä, Ü, Ö, !, ”, §, $, %, &, /, (, ), =, ?, #, +, *, ^, °] in the title lead to multiple errors and data corruption.