UCS@school 5 prepares schools for the digitization of education

Bremen, 1 December 2021 – with UCS@school 5, the leading provider of open source solutions for education and the public sector, Univention, has further simplified the digitization of education. Numerous improvements and innovations that provide for a more straightforward operation are implemented in the new version of the solution, optimized for schools and school boards. That includes technical retreading and more efficient administration. School administrators can effortlessly and almost automatically manage students’ digital identities and assign them to their schools and classes in the completely redesigned and user-friendly online portal. End users will also benefit from the new portal through deeper technical and visual integration of services, single sign-on, and improved accessibility in their use.

“With UCS@school 5, schools, school boards, and ministries of education receive even better tools for managing and integrating the various components of their educational platforms. Schools and school boards retain sovereignty and control over the digital identities as well as the sensitive data of teachers, pupils, and students,” says Ingo Steuwer, Product Manager for UCS at Univention. “Not only because of the ongoing pandemic, but also for the future expansion of digital offerings, good digital tools are crucial for the continuation and improvement of digital education.”

The most important innovations of UCS@school 5 at a glance

• New portal: The new portal frontend based on vue.js sets the technical basis for expanding more accessibility and integration possibilities of services for communication, collaborative work, and digital learning. The applications connected to UCS@school now start directly in the portal instead of separate windows. Users can work with them directly in the interface and easily switch between different applications. Furthermore, integrating the management modules for administrators into the portal is new, along with grouping modules in topic folders for more clarity. Administrators can now adapt school portals to the needs of the schools they supervise and customize them simply by dragging and dropping. With the CSS-based creation of themes, users can define colors and fonts for all web interfaces provided by Univention. By default, UCS@school comes with a modern dark theme but can be configured with other themes for the interface individually.
• Apps available for UCS@school 5: The essential apps for schools and school authorities are available with the launch of the new version. These include UCS@school ID Connector for distributing school identities, the communication platform and mail suite OX App Suite, Nextcloud and ownCloud for file sharing and collaboration, the video conference solution Jitsi Meet, the mobile device management Relution as well as the chat server Rocket.Chat and the Kanban board solution Wekan.
• More accessibility: The targeted focussing of controls in the portal for a mouse-free use is now possible, as is the provision of controls with descriptive texts for the benefit of screen readers, which has laid the foundation for more accessible services.
• Only one login for everything: With single sign-on (SSO) to the various applications, UCS@school makes it easier for the youngest pupils to use individual services such as e-mail, educational content, or tasks. Simplifications for administrators: Thanks to a new multi-select function, the simultaneous selection of several apps for installation, updating, or the uninstallation is possible in a single step. UCS@school automatically checks dependencies and suggests any additional apps required for simultaneous installation. Prometheus Alertmanager and Grafana provide even more precise monitoring in the integrated dashboard.

Availability

UCS@school 5 is available now with various subscription models and enterprise support. The maintenance guarantee covers up to 7 years. More information can be found on the website: https://www.univention.com/products/ucsschool/.

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 simple usability, 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) is 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) and the Sovereign Productivity Suite (SPS), Univention realizes the modernization of the IT infrastructure of the public sector and 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 via their school portals. Several federal states, municipalities, districts, administrations, and companies use UCS and UCS@school. Further information at https://www.univention.com/.

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