Today we present another educational platform that will soon be available via the Univention ID Broker for all connected school boards and their schools: itslearning.
Founded in Norway in 1999, itslearning is now one of the most widespread used European learning management systems (LMS). With offices in eight countries and its headquarters in Bergen, Norway, itslearning became part of the Sanoma Group in 2019 and is used by millions of people around the world.
We would like to thank the initiators and supporters of the School Foundation of the Lutheran Church of Saxony. Through their initiative, we were able to quickly start with the implementation and piloting. They are one of the first to connect itslearning via the Univention ID Broker.
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Advantages of the ID Broker
Linking itslearning to the Univention ID Broker promises a smooth transition for the connection between country, carrier or school instances of UCS@School and the learning management system. However, the ID Broker takes the interaction to a whole new level. Centralized authentication and the additional querying of user information, such as class and group memberships, will eliminate costly integration efforts in the future. Until now, these integration efforts had to be carried out by each school separately for each connection to a learning application. UCS@School users connect once to the ID Broker, provision a few essential user data on the ID Broker and can then directly activate itslearning and other offers connected to the ID Broker in their UCS@school portal.
In the following, we will present the possibilities of itslearning and its linkage to the ID Broker in more detail.
Thinking of teaching and learning as a continuous cycle with itslearning
The cloud-based learning management system itslearning is specifically tailored to general as well as vocational schools and provides education authorities as well as school boards and their schools with a tool that systematizes the work with valid curricula, increases the quality of teaching, and thus serves the learning success of the learners.
The core task of the learning-centered LMS is to enable a closed loop of teaching and learning. In this regard, itslearning sees itself as part of an ecosystem of diverse school and infrastructure applications.
A purpose-built learning platform which supports teachers and students
itslearning can be individually adapted to pedagogical processes: from implementation to planning and evaluation of learning progress. Using the platform, which is optimized for use on mobile devices, teachers and students can seamlessly access learning materials in learning environments that are highly variable in terms of time, space, and social structure in order to learn individually or collaboratively.
Among other things, the LMS supports professional development programs, as well as personalized and self-directed learning, whether in the classroom, homeschooling, or blended instruction, i. e., a mixture of both.
Creating a smooth transition with the Univention ID Broker
Stephan Delkus, project manager at itslearning, describes the advantages of integrating the ID Broker as a central authentication point for itslearning users as follows: “As described at the beginning, we see ourselves as part of an ecosystem of school and infrastructure applications. We also understand the importance of a central identity management system to manage and provision user data and groups, as well as a central point of authentication. In this way, applications can be provided to users via portal or accessed via integration within the learning platform.
For us, the connection to the ID Broker is an important step towards a central service that sits between identity management systems and learning applications and supports seamless access. We at itslearning have been working successfully with Univention for years and also want to be involved in the introduction of the ID Broker from the very beginning.
In doing so, we hope that our users will be able to dovetail and access school applications even more conveniently, so that they can fully concentrate on teaching and learning, and discover and benefit from the many advantages of media-supported learning.”
From Univention’s side, we are looking forward to the go-live of the integration, which will be a great gain for all our UCS@school users. For a more detailed picture of the learning platform, itslearning and its features, you can attend one of the school-wide online seminars that itslearning offers on a regular basis. You will also find additional information on the website: itslearning.com.
To learn more about the ID Broker, visit our product page!