Projects

The ec-ol communication and learning platform has already proven its worth in many areas. Find out about the nature and scope of selected ec-ol projects here.

Online School Saarland

„The Saarland education cloud Online-Schule Saarland is the standard tool for digital teaching at Saarland schools and for learning at home. Online-Schule Saarland can be used on all digital end devices. It is operated in compliance with data protection laws and is legally secure. With it, teachers can concentrate on what is really important. Good digitally supported teaching for our children and youngsters. … We are advancing digital education – with the Online School Saarland.“
(Christine Streichert-Clivot, Minister for Education and Culture Saarland)

online-schule.saarland

When the first hard lockdown was imposed in March 2020, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Schools in Saarland (MBK) faced major challenges. One of them was to provide access to a digital learning and exchange platform for all Saarland schools and their students and teachers as quickly as possible.

Since the MBK had already developed the ProfIL and ProLisa platforms together with EUROKEY, the structures developed there were used for the newly created, state-wide Online Schule Saarland platform (OSS). In an extremely short time, servers were purchased, the existing modules installed and new ones developed. A central task was to map the structure of the Saarland school landscape so that each school and its teachers and pupils can map their individual environment. Pupils can be assigned to their year groups and their teachers, the change between schools or also the simultaneous registration at several schools and educational institutions, such as the Bildungscampus Saarland or the ILF, were implemented. As of September 2020, the OSS “… is now used by around 300 institutions, predominantly schools. Around 62,000 users are registered, of which around 53,000 are pupils and around 7,800 teachers. When they register on the Saarland Education Cloud, teachers are automatically assigned an email address via which they can be reached. Currently, 7,800 teachers have such an address. This means that about 88 per cent of teachers in Saarland have their own school email address, which they can now use in a legally secure way to communicate with pupils as well as parents, guardians and colleagues.“
(Source: https://online-schule.saarland/news/#post-552)

Many applications are available on the platform: the learning platform moodle, the email server Zimbra, the file and collaboration platform Nextcloud, the ePortfolio Mahara, all materials of the Saarland Media Centre or the video conference servers under BigBlueButton. Further modules are in the pipeline. And very important: all users can log in once via a central login and then receive exactly the applications for which they have been activated. These services are supplemented by administrative tools, such as the automatic import of users from new schools, the possibility of registering at a school, switching between schools and much more.

The following is just a small excerpt of the possibilities offered by the platform:

Teachers divide their course into thematic course sections and post appropriate materials and learning activities.
Students complete learning success checks independently, automatically receive appropriate feedback and contact the teacher via the integrated messaging function in case of questions or difficulties.
Students assess each other (peer assessment)
Students submit work results to the teacher, who gives individual feedback and assesses them.
Students debate in forums and chat rooms.
Pupils work together on glossaries and present the results of their learning process in a structured way in wikis.
Teachers use the activity “Interactive Videos” to enhance films with additional didactic information and learning activities.
Teachers offer students adaptive learning paths through the course structure to guide them through the course according to their level of knowledge and allow individual choices of topics and activities.

Victor’s Group

The Victor’s Group, with administrative offices in Berlin, Munich and Saarbrücken, is a network of several service companies active in nursing, medical services as well as in the hotel and catering industry. With over 12,500 employees, Victor’s is one of the largest providers of senior citizen facilities in Germany. Like hardly any other area of life, nursing care has been confronted with major challenges as a result of the Corona crisis. The Victor’s Group is mastering this crisis not only in its daily practical work, but also in strategic course-setting. For example, the group of companies is pushing ahead with the digitalisation of training and further education, among other things with the development of a learning and communication platform based on ec-ol.

www.victors-group.com

Victor’s Global Academy Healthcare was the first corporate division to convert its further training offers for senior citizen facilities from classroom training to digital formats. Specifically, this involves the further training required by law for practice supervisors, i.e. those persons who are allowed to train trainees in a professional context. In view of the Corona pandemic, it is practically impossible to train the trainers in the senior citizen facilities by external lecturers. Therefore, the training courses were converted to the digital platform within a very short time. The residences are universally enthusiastic about the new offer.

Following the success of the VGA Healthcare platform, the internationally oriented nursing school EFSA, which also belongs to the Victor’s Group, has decided to use ec-ol to train both foreign and German nursing staff. Other corporate divisions will follow.

Nursing Schools Saarbrücken Hospital

The year 2020 has presented the nursing schools with several major challenges: With the new Nursing Professions Act, the professions of geriatric, paediatric and nursing care were merged into a common, generalist training to become a nursing specialist. This meant revising all curricula and teaching materials. At the same time, the Corona crisis confronted the nursing schools with the necessity of maintaining school operations and simultaneously implementing the necessary hygiene concepts. In addition, there was the requirement to teach the nursing students in home-schooling or hybrid classes.

www.klinikum-saarbruecken.de

Against this background, Saarbrücken Winterberg Hospital decided to rely on the existing Online Schule Saarland platform and use its infrastructure. This was made possible by a cooperation between the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Saarland Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Women and Family.

For reasons of data protection and security, the systems were to be hosted on the clinic’s own servers. In addition, all modules were to reflect the corporate identity of the Saarbrücken Clinic as part of a uniform corporate image.

EUROKEY was commissioned with the implementation of the platform under the condition of ensuring a quick project completion. Within four weeks after placing the order, the clinic’s platform was ready for operation. In the first step, the BigBlueButton video conferencing system was put into operation to ensure communication with the students.

Almost simultaneously, the Nextcloud collaboration platform was launched. Via this platform, teaching materials can be made available, worksheets can be distributed to the students and returned. The documents can also be worked on together.

In parallel, the Moodle learning platform was set up and the first e-learning units were designed and implemented. In the process, the team of the clinic was intensively trained and supervised by EUROKEY’s trainers. Together, teaching concepts were developed and administrative activities implemented, such as the automatic transfer of student data to the platform. The project is characterised by the great commitment of all those involved. The results show that Saarbrücken Hospital has chosen an innovative learning system and is on the right track!

https://www.klinikum-saarbruecken.de/karriere-portal/ausbildung-schule-fuer-gesundheitsfachberufe-praktikum/

“For us, the learning platform shows itself to be an innovative tool to meet in online teaching. Blended learning forms the bridge between the areas of competence development and social software. Wikis, weblogs, interactive exercise units, forums, portfolios, evaluations, tests, etc. can be used to promote systematic competence development and make collaborative learning fruitful. Learners network and can work collaboratively on tasks – at any time – in the classroom or in private. This made the project an important pillar for the implementation of the new framework curricula.

An important prerequisite for the success of the project was the competent and reliable cooperation with the company EUROKEY. Throughout the implementation phase, the whole team was regarded as a motivated contact partner.”

Doris Schohl, Klinikum Winterberg

Gesundheits- und Krankenpflegerin
Fachschwester für Intensivpflege und Anästhesie
Pflegemanagement (B. A.)
Lehrerin für Gesundheitsfachberufe

ILF – Institute for Teacher Training and Further Education

The ILF is a pedagogical institute for in-service and further training sponsored by the Catholic Church with locations in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The ILF Saarbrücken offers further education courses for teachers, organises study days at schools and accompanies school development processes.

In addition, the events in the field of Catholic religion, for which the dioceses of Trier and Speyer are responsible, are accompanied and administered by the ILF. All in all, the ILF supports the work of the teachers based on a Christian attitude. There has long been a close and trusting cooperation with the Saarland State Institute for Pedagogy and Media, the LPM.

www.ilf-saarbruecken.de

Since the ILF also had to transfer its face-to-face courses to the digital world due to the Corona crisis, it made sense to dock onto the LPM’s existing platform, the Bildungscampus Saarland. The biggest advantage: teachers can use the same ec-ol tools in the LPM and ILF courses that they already know from their daily work at school.

And to make access even easier, EUROKEY has developed the possibility of a comfortable and simple school change: Teachers register at ‘their’ home school and can then switch to the ILF or LPM platforms at a mouse click. There they will find their familiar tools again – with new content and new offers.

However, it is also important for the ILF that its independence remains clear. Participants can register on the platform via a button on the homepage (https://www.ilf-saarbruecken.de). They are then redirected to the ILF’s moodle or Nextcloud environments, where the institute’s online courses and materials are available. And of course, the ILF also has its own video conferencing system, BigBlueButton, which can be integrated into moodle or used as a stand-alone video conferencing system. In addition, the ILF can draw on the many high-quality materials, handouts, online tutorials and further developments of the Online-Schule Saarland and the LPM, while at the same time building its own individual learning and collaboration platform.

Although EUROKEY has been working as an IT service provider for the ILF for many years, a new quality of cooperation has developed between the ILF and EUROKEY teams in the many joint workshops and seminars held in recent months. Beyond the introduction of the new technologies, concepts for the integration of digital mediation concepts into the existing structures have been developed together. Together we are working on making the Institute future-proof in this respect. The paths from initial ideas and needs to the their practical realisation are thus simple and short. In this way, a dynamic process emerges from the joint work.

Server-Eye (KrämerIT)

Digital recertification tests support the Server-Eye partner programme.

Server-Eye is one of the leading German IT monitoring software products for monitoring hardware & software systems as well as network and communication. The solution is continuously being further developed. Accordingly, sales and application partners must be kept up to date on a regular basis. Conversely, the manufacturer KrämerIT wants to ensure that the partners are in a position to provide the best possible support to their customers. For this reason, KrämerIT regularly offers certification training courses to provide partners with the knowledge they need to use Server-Eye successfully, efficiently and profitably.

www.server-eye.de

Upon completion of the certification training, the partner receives a certificate that must be renewed annually. In these recertification measures, the participants are informed about all important innovations in Server-Eye. A test at the end ensures that the participant has acquired the necessary knowledge for the efficient use of Server-Eye. The successful completion of the test is confirmed by a certificate valid for 12 months.

For a long time, these recertification tests were conducted via a webcast or on-site training. In recent years, step-by-step digitalisation offered participants the opportunity to take the tests online, although the evaluation of the tests and the dispatch of the certificates still had to be carried out manually by KrämerIT employees.

Starting this year, KrämerIT is relying on a complete digitalisation of the tests based on ec-ol. For this purpose, the learning platform Moodle was set up, in which the professionals from Server-Eye designed and implemented the complete recertification test with the support of EUROKEY.

An additional Moodle plug-in was used to integrate the possibility of designing certificates directly in Moodle and generating them dynamically for each participant. The certificate can be sent by e-mail or downloaded directly by the participant. Access is only possible on the condition that the test has been successfully completed.

In a further step, the connection is to be made to Krämer-IT’s customer management system so that all relevant participant data can be taken directly from the existing database.

Schülerhilfe

EUROKEY supports the Schülerhilfe institutes

Schülerhilfe offers professional tutoring to 125,000 pupils at 1,100 locations in Germany and Austria. This comprehensive support gives pupils the self-confidence they need to cope with everyday school life and the demands of modern society. This enables them to successfully shape their professional and social life. Schülerhilfe provides innovative offers for individual support and thus ensures better learning success and more fun in learning.

Locations:
Beckingen, Saarlouis, Saarwellingen, St. Ingbert, Wadgassen

www.schuelerhilfe.de

At the beginning of the pandemic, private lessons were held completely online at many locations in Saarland. Among other things, the Zoom video conferencing system was used. Classes are now being held in person again. Nevertheless, the online offer is to be maintained and stabilised.

In order to expand the offer with a learning management system, save costs in the long term and operate the platform in compliance with data protection regulations, Andreas Kempf, owner of the student support centres in Beckingen, Saarlouis, Saarwellingen, St. Ingbert and Wadgassen, decided to use Moodle in conjunction with the open source video conferencing system BigBlueButton on his own servers. In order to ensure ongoing operation with regard to updates, security patches and maintenance work, he sought the support of the EUROKEY ec-ol team, which will ensure the maintenance and operation of the systems in future.
The collaboration is very fruitful for both sides, as technical expertise and practical experience in using the systems complement each other perfectly.