Bremen, May 5, 2021 – Univention and the Verband Bildungsmedien e. V. are improving digitization in education with their partnership. The association has commissioned the Bremen-based software manufacturer to connect the identity management of its school solution UCS@school with the association’s license management BILDUNGSLOGIN as part of a pilot project. It intends to provide teachers and pupils with simple access to digital educational media in compliance with data protection laws.
The piloting will take place with selected school authorities, starting in the school year 2021/2022. Afterward, BILDUNGSLOGIN will be connected to all leading public and private school administration and learning management systems.
Pioneering step for digitization in education
“Digitisation in education must continue to develop even after the end of the pandemic. Therefore, we see it as our task to do everything we can to enable schools, school authorities, and publishers to network better,” says Peter Ganten, founder and CEO of Univention GmbH, explaining the aims of the partnership. “To this end, we are developing an open, flexible, and easy-to-implement standard on behalf of the VBM. Users will be able to access all media licensed for them quickly, easily, and in compliance with data protection laws. This way, schools and school authorities will benefit from the great variety of offers of the educational media publishers.”
“Educational media publishers offer a wide range of digital teaching and learning media that are used in schools every day,” explains Christoph Pienkoß, Managing Director of Verband Bildungsmedien e. V. “More and more states and municipalities, as well as the federal government, are creating the conditions for this: They are investing in the necessary infrastructure, creating security in data protection, and shaping the administrative framework. Now it is especially about the simple administration and use of educational media licenses in schools.”
Technical Background Bildungslogin 2.0
Media licenses always assign to individual users or groups of users, such as classes or academic years. With BILDUNGSLOGIN, the management and use of these licenses integrate into the identity management systems of school boards and schools. Such systems as UCS@school are already in use at several federal states, numerous school authorities, and individual schools or are currently developing more intensively. Univention and the Verband Bildungsmedien are making a standard for allocating licenses to user groups of these identity management systems with an easy-to-use interface for exchanging licensing information.
Open to manufacturers, data-saving and expandable
The intermediary component between schools and publishers of BILDUNGSLOGIN is developed as an open system and published under an open-source license (AGPLV3). Users only need to log in once with their school account (single sign-on) to use the system. In the interests of the data economy, the software transmits the data required for the authorization check in pseudonymized form. After successful authentication, it enables the convenient use of the licensed content – but without using the person’s real name. Using the mediation service is free of charge for schools and school boards and is open to all interested providers of digital educational media in the medium term.
Test phase and outlook
The pilot phase will initially take place with selected municipalities and schools. After the test phase, teachers and pupils, who already use the Univention solution UCS@school, could access the extensive range of content licensed for them in a very short time. At the same time, it implements one of the great advantages of open source software: Other identity management systems can also very easily integrate access to digital educational media offerings through the standardized and open interface.
About Verband Bildungsmedien e. V.
The Verband Bildungsmedien e. V. is the leading association of professional educational media providers in Germany. Its members develop didactically tailored teaching content and learning solutions in dialogue with teachers and pupils. Especially in the digital age, quality-assured educational media enable individual success and social participation. Further information at www.bildungsmedien.de.
About Univention
Univention, based in Bremen, Germany, is a provider of open source software for digital identity management and application integration. In addition to openness, scalability, and ease of use, the focus is always on digital sovereignty to ensure that users have complete control over their data and identities. The core product Univention Corporate Server (UCS) serves this purpose as an open integration platform with an identity management system, a web portal for easy access to applications, and the Univention App Center for the seamless integration of applications and services from third-party manufacturers. With its products and their integration into the Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) as well as the Sovereign Productivity Suite (SPS), Univention realizes the modernization of the IT infrastructure of the public sector as well as of companies.
With UCS@school, Univention offers a platform optimized for digital education with centralized identity management for the simple provision of services from different providers, including learning management systems, e-mail, cloud, and office applications for schools, school boards, and states through their school portals. UCS and UCS@school are used by several federal states, numerous municipalities, and districts, administrations, and companies. Further information at www.univention.com.
