diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index a1e0edb..652f3e4 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -8,6 +8,25 @@ before_script:
     - mypy --version
     - pytest --version
 
+test-codestyle:3.7:
+  stage: test
+  image: python:3.7
+  script:
+    - pwd
+    - ls -l
+    - python -c "import sys;print(sys.path)"
+    - flake8 --config=setup.cfg
+    - mypy --config-file mypy.ini
+
+test-units:3.7:
+  stage: test
+  image: python:3.7
+  script:
+    - pwd
+    - ls -l
+    - python -c "import sys;print(sys.path)"
+    - python -m pytest .
+
 test-codestyle:
   stage: test
   script:
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 3dcd9e4..bf51391 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -4,26 +4,30 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/) 
 and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/).
 
-## Unreleased
+## [0.1.1] - 2022/01/21
 
-- [...]
+### Changed
+
+- make package compatible with python 3.7
 
 ## [0.1.0] - 2022/01/06
 
-- added basic quantized layers
+### Added
+
+- basic quantized layers
     - QActivation
     - QConv
     - QLinear
-- added several debug layers
-- added resnet, lenet
-- added various quantization functions
+- several debug layers
+- resnet, lenet
+- various quantization functions
     - approxsign
     - dorefa
     - sign
     - steheaviside
     - swishsign
-- added support for cifar10 and mnist
-- adds general training script for image classification
+- support for cifar10 and mnist
+- general training script for image classification
 - result logger for csv and tensorboard
 - checkpoint manager
 - eta estimator
diff --git a/examples/image_classification/image_classification.py b/examples/image_classification/image_classification.py
index eda2721..32a7ee4 100644
--- a/examples/image_classification/image_classification.py
+++ b/examples/image_classification/image_classification.py
@@ -58,10 +58,10 @@ def main(args: argparse.Namespace, model_args: argparse.Namespace) -> None:
             root_directory=args.dataset_dir, download=args.download, augmentation=augmentation_level
         )
 
-        train_loader = DataLoader(train_dataset, batch_size=args.batch_size, num_workers=args.num_workers,
-                                  shuffle=True, pin_memory=True)  # type: ignore
-        test_loader = DataLoader(test_dataset, batch_size=args.batch_size, num_workers=args.num_workers,
-                                 shuffle=False, pin_memory=True)  # type: ignore
+        train_loader = DataLoader(train_dataset, batch_size=args.batch_size,  # type: ignore
+                                  num_workers=args.num_workers, shuffle=True, pin_memory=True)  # type: ignore
+        test_loader = DataLoader(test_dataset, batch_size=args.batch_size,  # type: ignore
+                                 num_workers=args.num_workers, shuffle=False, pin_memory=True)  # type: ignore
 
     model_kwargs = vars(model_args)
     logging.debug(f"got model args as dict: {model_kwargs}")
diff --git a/examples/image_classification/utils/experiment_creator.py b/examples/image_classification/utils/experiment_creator.py
index 0759bf1..e266894 100644
--- a/examples/image_classification/utils/experiment_creator.py
+++ b/examples/image_classification/utils/experiment_creator.py
@@ -182,7 +182,12 @@ def create(
             logging.debug(f"copying {file_name}...")
             file_path = (self.project_root / Path(file_name)).resolve()
             if file_path.is_dir():
-                shutil.copytree(str(file_path), str(code_path / file_name), dirs_exist_ok=True)
+                python_version = list(map(int, sys.version.split()[0].split(".")))
+                if python_version[0] == 3 and python_version[1] == 7:
+                    # python3.7 does not have the dirs_exist_ok arg
+                    shutil.copytree(str(file_path), str(code_path / file_name))
+                else:
+                    shutil.copytree(str(file_path), str(code_path / file_name), dirs_exist_ok=True)  # type: ignore
             else:
                 shutil.copy(str(file_path), str(code_path / file_name))
 
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 10fada5..fee2eac 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ def get_requirements(file_path: Union[Path, str]):
         "License :: OSI Approved :: GNU General Public License v3 or later (GPLv3+)",
         "Operating System :: OS Independent",
         "Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only",
-        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7",
     ],
-    python_requires='>=3.8',
+    python_requires='>=3.7',
 )