Education in the Digital World

SODIX / MUNDO – Interface and Exchange Platform for Educational Media

SODIX forms the backbone of the joint educational media infrastructure of the Länder. As a technical hub, SODIX acts as a background exchange platform for educational media. It aggregates teaching materials and educational content from various sources (including public broadcasters, Open Educational Resources (OER), and educational media providers), checks and harmonizes the descriptive metadata, and makes these available to third-party systems—such as state media libraries and MUNDO—via an open interface.

This process is technically supported by artificial intelligence, which (semi-)automatically generates metadata. Texts, videos, and audio files are analyzed, keywords identified, and then mapped to the respective curricula.

In addition to collecting, reviewing, and providing institutionally developed educational media, teachers, learners, and parents will in the future be able not only to upload their own materials via a media upload function, but also to create materials themselves using an editor and—if desired—make them available to MUNDO and the state systems for further use. Final approval is granted after a legal review of the material by the editorial team of FWU (the Länder Institute for Educational Media). As SODIX continues to evolve, participating Länder will be able to collaborate in the media cataloguing process through their media portals and enrich metadata individually with curriculum and competency links.

Another core component of SODIX is the open and freely accessible educational media library MUNDO. MUNDO aims to support learners, teachers, and guardians in their daily work by ensuring centralized discoverability of open, legally compliant, and quality-assured materials and by guaranteeing their lawful use. Through filtering options (e.g., by subject, grade level, and school type), search functionality, and intuitive navigation, educational content is easily accessible to all users.

FWU—the Länder Institute for Educational Media—was commissioned with the implementation of the project. All Länder participate in the SODIX/MUNDO project. Project leadership lies with the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

DigLu – Digital Learning on the Go is an online-based learning management system for children of travelling workers, their guardians, and the teachers at their home and support schools as well as the regional teachers involved.

DigLu aims to create a cross-state digital infrastructure for the education of children of travelling workers—combining the concept of “learning on the road” with the opportunities of learning in the digital world. In particular, DigLu seeks to achieve the following improvements in the education of these children, which has so far taken place largely on an analog basis:

Continuity of learning while on the move

Children of travelling workers can be continuously supported and guided online via DigLu by teachers at their home and support schools, as well as by regional teachers (including via video communication).

Documentation of learning progress and performance assessment

The learning and performance development of children of travelling workers is continuously documented in DigLu by all teachers involved.

Location-independent access to diverse teaching and learning materials

The internet makes it possible to provide individualized teaching and learning materials in various formats, tailored to the needs of each child.

In an initial pilot phase, all functions will be tested both qualitatively and quantitatively in cross-state practice and adapted to the resulting requirements for regular operation. In addition, additional functions will be developed and integrated into ongoing testing—for example, the development of a DigLu app for offline use with subsequent synchronization, the development of digital structures for individualized and self-organized learning materials, and the development of open interfaces to ensure compatibility of DigLu with various existing or future digital learning platforms in the education sector.

The company audivisa – Deutsche Gesellschaft für E-Learning mbH has been commissioned with implementing the project. All Länder participate in the DigLu project.
Project leadership lies with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia

School Cloud Consortium

The federal states of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, and Thuringia are developing a joint teaching and learning infrastructure for all stakeholders in education within the framework of the DigitalPakt Schule through the School Cloud Consortium project.

The School Cloud Consortium software, funded by the federal government and piloted in the three states until mid‑2021 as part of a research project at the Hasso Plattner Institute, has since been used temporarily during the pandemic and is now being further developed as a joint initiative of the Länder to meet both shared and state-specific requirements.

The goal of this development project, funded through the DigitalPakt, is to transfer the prototype into regular operation. In doing so, compliance with data protection regulations, sovereign data sovereignty, legal certainty, and needs-based design are of the highest priority.

The School Cloud Consortium software is an intuitive, GDPR-compliant digital teaching and learning environment that can be used across different school types and educational settings.

Developed as an open-source platform, the School Cloud Consortium software aims to make educational content accessible online—independent of location and time. Its use is thus ensured both in classroom settings and in extracurricular and home learning.

By leveraging cloud technology, documents for teaching can be provided independent of time, place, and device, collaboratively developed, shared across schools, and securely stored.

Additionally, free and proprietary learning content from various providers on the internet can be used in a data‑protection‑compliant manner. The video conferencing tool BigBlueButton offers a likewise privacy-compliant communication environment that enables interaction with whole classes, small groups, or individuals.

The further development and the technical operation required for this work are carried out by Dataport (AöR), an information and communication service provider. The three states of Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, and Thuringia participate in the project.
Project leadership lies with Lower Saxony.

Further information is available on the following websites:

• School Cloud Consortium (general project page)
• School-Cloud Brandenburg
• Lower Saxony Education Cloud
• Thuringia School Cloud 

Development and Provision of a Media Database with AI‑Powered Services for the Management, Distribution, and Use of Educational Media and Tools

The goal of the project is to provide a media database with AI‑powered services for media distribution. These services are intended to enable the recording, management, and distribution of future‑proof, licensed, and quality‑assured teaching materials, making it possible to represent new media formats, contemporary licensing models, and usage scenarios—both on the administrative side and for end users—within media portals.

To ensure the availability of future‑oriented formats for use in teaching, a technological further development of current media distribution systems is necessary. Through a technical redesign of data and media storage, media layout, license management, and an expansion of the media libraries, it will be ensured that teachers and learners can use these media effectively and with low barriers in their familiar working environments.

The required modules will be connected to one another in a modular, building‑block system. The modules will not rely on proprietary interfaces but instead be based on standards and linked to existing structures wherever possible. Each module will contain one or more abstract components—e.g., Software as a Service or microservices—allowing quick responses to new requirements, such as replacing a module.

The federal states of Hamburg, North Rhine‑Westphalia, and Baden‑Württemberg are involved in the project. Project leadership lies with Baden‑Württemberg.

The cross-state initiative aims to develop enhancements that specifically improve the itslearning learning management system for use in the participating states (Berlin, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein) and enable cross-state collaboration. It therefore represents an investment in digital educational infrastructures. The planned enhancements are based on requirements identified through the use of itslearning as a state-level solution in the participating German states. These specific requirements are not planned as product developments in the medium term.

The initiative foresees improvements to itslearning within six subprojects:

1. Optimizing the system with regard to accessibility

   The goal is to improve the user experience for students and teachers, with a focus on accessible use. This includes improvements to both the web and tablet versions. Accessibility-related developments aim to move from WCAG 2.1 AA with exceptions to full WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, as well as achieving conformity with EN 301 549.

2. Adapting itslearning for use by primary school pupils

   By optimizing and simplifying the itslearning user interface, it should become more accessible for younger pupils. This includes reducing interface complexity to lower cognitive load, simplifying navigation, and improving the content editor tool to make it easier for teachers to create suitable materials for primary learners—with more images, more videos, and simpler layouts.

3. Tablet app and improved mobile use

   The goal is to develop a tablet-specific and accessible itslearning app for primary and secondary students, taking into account the specific requirements of the participating states.

4. Improving the course catalog function

   The course catalog will be enhanced in terms of visibility, enrollment processes, and support for cross-site collaboration. This will enable a function at state and school-authority level to publish and share courses in a data-protection-compliant manner within course catalogs, making it easier for teachers and students to enroll across schools and states.

5. Automated migration from Moodle

   By enabling the exchange of courses between itslearning and Moodle—the most widely used learning management systems in Germany—cooperation on LMS topics will be possible between almost all German federal states.

6. Future-proof learning with a student‑centered data model

   A central, person-specific storage location for students’ materials and data will be introduced. It will manage student data independently of itslearning courses and teachers. The aim is to ensure that students can access and retain their educational results and materials even when switching or leaving an itslearning instance.

itslearning is a commercial product. Therefore, a legal feasibility study will first be conducted in an initial project phase to determine whether a direct award to itslearning as the developer is permissible under current procurement law. If the result is positive, the subprojects described above will be implemented.

The states of Berlin, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Schleswig-Holstein are participating in this cross-state initiative. Project leadership lies with Bremen.

TBA – Technology-Based Assessment

TBA supports the development of a joint test infrastructure across the federal states for designing, administering, and scoring online-based procedures for diagnostics and performance assessment.

The use of online-based tests and surveys is becoming increasingly important in schools and offers teachers and schools numerous advantages, such as easy preparation, implementation, and scoring of results that provide insights into students’ performance levels or attitudes.

Three freely available and flexibly usable web applications for the online-based development, administration, and evaluation of tests and surveys in educational contexts are being created:

1. Test Studio

   The Test Studio includes, among other features, an item editor for creating and editing test items or survey questions. In addition to simple standardized item types (e.g., multiple-choice), it also offers digital tools for innovative tasks with a higher degree of interactivity (e.g., dynamic geometry software). States, schools, and teachers can use it to create their own test items and questionnaires. In the future, test items developed by the Institute for Educational Quality Improvement (IQB) will also be created in the Test Studio.

2. Test Center

   A Test Center is being set up for test preparation and administration. It includes, among other components, a system check to verify the minimal technical requirements for available school hardware (computers or tablets). A test management console allows teachers to centrally control tests and surveys and to monitor students’ progress.

3. Coding Box

   Finally, a Coding Box is provided to process raw data (response data, log data) and to conduct simple data analyses using a range of functions.

A standardized interface enables integration of these web applications into existing third‑party or state test systems or school portals and allows them to be incorporated into processes of instructional development, for example through  VERA (comparative assessments in grades 3 and 8). 

The IQB has been commissioned with implementing the project. All federal states participate in the TBA project. The project is led by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

Further information is available on the IQB project website.. The source code for the web applications is openly accessible.

Further Development of Technology-Based Assessment (TBA II)

As part of the TBA II project, the joint test infrastructure developed in TBA I is being expanded to include functions for adaptive and formative testing. Up to now, online tests can only be carried out linearly, meaning that the entire content of the test is predetermined for all test-takers. With TBA II, adaptive and formative testing will also be possible in the future.

The adaptive testing function makes it possible to select test modules of varying difficulty during test administration on the basis of current performance estimates using a routing mechanism, and to present these as the next content. This functionality may be limited to only a few test modules with multiple task blocks. For example, after an initial module that is identical for all students, two further modules of differing difficulty could follow. The adaptive testing system can also be applied at the task level.

Adaptive tests enable a better match between test difficulty and a test‑taker’s performance. This helps prevent tasks from being too easy or too difficult for individual students—tasks that would also provide little diagnostic information. Through adaptively assigning more suitable tasks, it may be possible to improve the precision of performance measurement and thus the construct validity of the test, while keeping the test duration constant. This will be investigated as part of the project.

The formative component of TBA II involves the use of several sequential and repeatedly applicable basic‑skills assessments with feedback on results—for example, at the beginning of grade 2 and again in the middle of grade 2—to identify learning progress. Formative testing has so far not been used regularly and systematically in the German school context. At the same time, research provides evidence for the performance‑enhancing effects of formative assessments. At the end of 2022, the Standing Scientific Commission of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs recommended formative assessment in its report “Teaching Basic Skills – Securing Educational Opportunities. Perspectives for Primary School.”

With TBA II, the technical infrastructure required to conduct formative assessments as an additional option within the online test system is being developed and tested in grades 2 and 3. In grade 3, different test modules—e.g., for assessing basic competencies—may be administered prior to the VERA test items. However, the development of these items is not part of TBA II.

The TBA II project is being carried out at the IQB and at kompetenztest.de at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. All federal states except Mecklenburg‑Vorpommern and Saarland are participating in the TBA II project. Project leadership lies with Schleswig‑Holstein.

Further information is available on the  IQB project site. The source code for the web applications is openly accessible. .

Feedback Portal for Learning Progress Diagnostics (TBA III)

In the context of the comparative assessments in grades 3 and 8, a wide range of state‑specific or institution‑specific feedback systems currently exist, each aligned with the respective state’s feedback concepts. Although the structure of the result data is nearly identical across states, the models vary widely—ranging from feedback based on response frequencies to competence‑level models and feedback using values on the metric of the Educational Standards (BiSta). Both the presentation formats and the processing of raw data differ substantially.

Existing feedback systems are not interoperable for competence diagnostics; typically, each assessment procedure uses its own dedicated feedback system. Comparative assessments hold particular significance because they are intended to be used by all federal states, which makes related developments especially suitable for funding within the DigitalPakt framework. Defined interfaces are intended to enable integration into both state‑specific and cross‑state platforms.

TBA III aims to develop a nationwide digital infrastructure for providing feedback on data from competence tests, learning progress assessments, baseline studies, and comparative assessments to various recipients. To this end, a web‑based platform is being developed that receives data packages containing test results via an interface, validates them, and forwards them to prototypical innovative digital feedback formats. These formats are empirically tested and developed using agile methods to ensure their usefulness in schools. The feedback includes specific, appropriate subject‑didactic resources that optimally support schools in using the results for further instructional work.

This newly created digital feedback infrastructure provides a set of exemplary, tested online feedback formats that can serve as a basis for feedback in other subjects, domains, and contexts.

The digital feedback infrastructure is designed to meet nine goals:

1. It provides empirically tested, practically relevant digital feedback for various test systems.
2. It can be used by all states or by evaluation agencies commissioned by them to provide feedback on comparative assessments and other diagnostic procedures.
3. It supports the use of data from various test systems (e.g., IQB, kompetenztest.de, zepf, or indibit GmbH).
4. It addresses various user groups such as teachers, classes, schools, or school administrators.
5. Its open usability supports the implementation of state‑specific strategies.
6. It enables the exchange of data across states and test systems using a common data format.
7. It supports the integration of state‑specific products and strategies, e.g., existing materials or links between different measures.
8. It enables the exchange, joint use, and further development of specific solutions (e.g., additional online feedback formats).
9. It also supports linking to state‑specific digital learning platforms and school clouds, as well as external sources for educational materials (e.g., SODIX).

With the implementation of the project, an open‑source solution becomes available to the federal states, ensuring through appropriate interfaces that the feedback formats can interact with any test platform. This creates a free and publicly accessible feedback portal that can be used by states or by state‑commissioned evaluation agencies for feedback in the sense of diagnostic support.

The TBA III project is being implemented at the IQB and at kompetenztest.de at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

The participating states are Berlin, Hesse, Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Rhineland‑Palatinate, Saxony, and Schleswig‑Holstein.
Project leadership lies with North Rhine‑Westphalia.

SMART – Understanding‑Oriented Online Diagnostics Illustrated by the Example of Diagnosis and Support in Mathematics

SMART stands for “Specific Mathematics Assessments that Reveal Thinking” – an understanding‑oriented online tool for diagnosis and learning support.

The program consists of innovative online tests lasting 5 to 15 minutes, which can be used to diagnose students’ conceptual understanding. Immediately after completing a test, teachers receive a research‑based diagnostic report as well as recommendations for individual learning support.

This project is to be carried out in cooperation with the German Centre for Mathematics Teacher Education (DZLM), University of Duisburg‑Essen.

SMART tests were originally developed and researched at the University of Melbourne by Kaye Stacey, Vicki Steinle, Beth Price, and Eugene Gvozdenko. Around 130 tests covering lower‑secondary mathematics topics are available in English at smartvic.com and will be adapted for use in German‑speaking contexts. They will also be integrated into commonly used learning platforms.

Further information is available on the websites of the German Centre for Mathematics Teacher Education and the University of Duisburg‑Essen.

All federal states participate in the SMART project.
Project leadership lies with Lower Saxony.

Adaptive Intelligent System (AIS) including the AI Chatbot Interface “telli”

The two projects Adaptive Learning Cloud (ALC) and Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) have been merged.

AIS, as an AI‑supported adaptive computer‑based learning environment, can make a substantial contribution to the individual support of students and to assisting and professionalizing teachers in their everyday work. The personalized delivery of digital learning content enables learners to study more independently, according to their needs, and at their own pace. For teachers, time is freed up that allows them to devote more targeted personal attention to students. The system developed in this project is therefore intended to integrate flexibly into various instructional phases, creating a framework for modern, varied, motivating, and adaptive teaching and learning.

At the core of the system are individualized learning pathways based on each student’s current level of knowledge. The foundation of the system’s adaptivity is an intelligent algorithm—also referred to as artificial intelligence (AI). Based on information about the student’s learning process, the system assigns appropriately tailored content and continuously checks this assignment. The learning environment is also intended to provide learners with direct feedback on their learning progress. Through explanations and system‑generated hints, learners should be able to better understand their individual knowledge gaps or misconceptions and close them independently through suitable practice tasks. Existing areas of knowledge and competence are thus to be strengthened and further expanded. Current developments in the field of large language models and AI can be used for this purpose.

At the same time, teachers receive a tool that gives them an overview of the learning status of individual students at any time and helps them identify individual support needs. The aggregated analysis of learning data also enables teachers to design specific instructional offerings for the entire learning group at an early stage and in a proactive manner. The overarching goal of the system is always to serve as a modern digital learning tool that supports teachers in their pedagogical autonomy and helps them enable targeted individualized learning for students.

The target system to be made available to schools at the end of the project period in 2026 will be a platform containing adaptive learning materials and exercises that support teachers in their instruction and related tasks, while also enabling learners to work independently at their individual proficiency level during synchronous and asynchronous practice phases, both in class and at home. Since the planned system is also to be open to providers of commercial educational media, administrative functions are required that allow the provisioning, use, and—where applicable—billing of licensed media. The system will also include an editor through which content can be created or integrated, both by commercial educational media providers and by non‑commercial authors or author teams.

As part of the AIS initiative, the FWU is implementing “telli,” an AI chatbot interface that provides a short‑term foundational solution for access to large language models (LLMs). Telli will be available to the federal states starting in spring 2025 and will be operated at least until the end of the project in June 2026. An operational concept for the period after June 2026 will be developed during the project, depending on the overall AIS solution.

All federal states are participating in the AIS project.
Project leadership lies with the state of Hamburg, and the FWU has been commissioned with project implementation.

Cross‑State Survey Platform minnit’

The aim of the project is to optimize and functionally expand the survey tool minnit’, which is operated by the Baden‑Württemberg State Media Center.

The survey app minnit’ is a web application that has enabled teachers in Baden‑Württemberg to conduct surveys with their learning groups since 2019. It is:

• free of charge
• data‑privacy compliant
• intuitive
• ad‑free

Current features include:

• Single choice
• Multiple choice
• True/false
• Free text/word clouds
• Cloze tests

Through its further development, minnit’ is intended to help achieve the goals set out in the KMK strategy “Education in a Digital World” and empower learners to actively and responsibly shape the future.

Minnit’ is to be developed into a competitive alternative to other survey applications that cannot be used in compliance with the GDPR, integrating and expanding their various functionalities and fields of application.

The following enhancements are planned:

• New modules (e.g., new question types)
• New views (e.g., analog use with a single mobile device and internet access)
• Gamification elements
• Augmented reality features

In addition to these functional extensions, cross‑state collaboration is expected to create synergy effects—on the one hand through a jointly developed, thematically structured survey library, and on the other hand through community features, such as allowing users to rate publicly available surveys.

An introductory video provides insight into the application’s use cases.

The project involves the states of Baden‑Württemberg, Bavaria, and Saxony.
Project leadership lies with Baden‑Württemberg.

IDeRBlog ts is a tool developed as an Erasmus+ innovation project between 2014 and 2017 and extended until 2021.

It is a platform for students that enables the planning, implementation, and publication of digital writing processes, taking into account new approaches for individualized support in developing users’ spelling competencies.

The platform thus makes a significant contribution to improving core competencies in German—specifically writing, reading, and spelling.

In addition, the platform includes an algorithm that automatically collects, analyzes, and evaluates data on learners’ progress (Learning Analytics). This enables individualized spelling support for all users. Students receive practice materials specifically tailored to their personal spelling‑error patterns. These materials consist of externally sourced online exercises, worksheets, and exercises programmed by the IDeRBlog team.

By using the platform, students’ digital competencies are strengthened and improved in an integrated subject‑specific manner. These competencies correspond to the areas outlined in the KMK’s digital strategy and in the curricula of the German federal states—particularly the areas of “Communicating and Collaborating,” “Producing and Presenting,” and “Protecting and Acting Safely.”

In summary: IDeRBlog ts is an intelligent tutoring system that can be used in German language instruction at both primary and secondary school levels.

Project objectives:

• Integration of IDeRBlog ts via single sign‑on (SSO) with the identity management systems implemented in the participating federal states
• Further development and redesign of the user interface
• Development of a game, as approved in the amended project proposal, applying a game‑based learning approach to improve students’ spelling skills

Further information can be found on the project website, or you are welcome to contact the IDeRBlog ts team.

The project involves the federal states of North Rhine‑Westphalia and Saarland.
Project leadership lies with Saarland.

2P | Potential & Perspective is an online‑based procedure for diagnostics, support planning, and support of children and adolescents aged 10 and above.

The goal of the 2P Learning Tool DaZ project is to develop a new 2P module that will be integrated into the existing 2P platform and linked to the diagnostic module 2P Lernstand DaZ. The 2P Learning Tool DaZ is a digital learning tool for in‑school and out‑of‑school learning of German as a second language. The target group consists of students in grades 5–10 of all school types who require specialized DaZ support. Existing DaZ materials from the federal states will be digitized and incorporated into the tool’s practice tasks. The learning tool will be available via browser or as an app.

Further central features of the learning tool include:

• Integration into a narrative framework, where students are accompanied by digital mentors (“gamification”)
• A real‑life‑oriented learning environment (“task orientation”)
• Automated adaptation to each learner’s proficiency level (“adaptivity”)
• Practice tasks with multi‑step feedback (“scaffolding”)
• Visible learning progress for students within the learning environment
• Learning progress visible to teachers within the teacher administration area of the 2P platform

Further information about the 2P system can be found on the project website. project website.

The project is led by the state of Rhineland‑Palatinate. The participating states are Baden‑Württemberg, Berlin, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine‑Westphalia, and Schleswig‑Holstein.

The aim of the 2P primary project is to develop an online‑based procedure for diagnostics, support planning, and adaptive learning in primary school.

It includes the following diagnostic and support modules:

• “German language proficiency” for newly arrived primary‑school children with migration backgrounds,
• “basic linguistic competencies,”
• “basic mathematical competencies,”
• as well as the analog module “social‑emotional competencies.”

These modules are embedded in a platform for individualized digital support planning.

The target group consists of all primary‑school children in grades 1 to 4, including those with support needs in German as a second language (DaZ) and/or in the basic competencies required to achieve minimum standards (according to the report of the Standing Scientific Commission of the KMK (SWK, 2022), Securing Educational Opportunities – Perspectives for Primary School).

2P primary represents an extension of the already established procedure 2P | Potential & Perspective used in lower secondary education. Existing materials from the federal states will be digitized for use in the diagnostic and learning tool. The diagnostic and learning tool will be available as a browser‑based application and as an app.

Further key features of 2P primary include:

• Automated adaptation of the learning tool to each student’s proficiency level (“adaptivity”)
• Practice tasks with multi‑step feedback (“scaffolding”)
• Diagnostic test modules with quality‑assured test items
• Integration into a child‑friendly user interface, in which students are guided by digital mentors (“gamification”)
• A real‑life‑oriented learning environment (“task orientation”)
• A teacher administration platform for task assignment, insight into diagnostic and learning‑related results, and the basis for individualized support planning

Project duration: April 2023 to December 2025

Further information about the 2P primary procedure can be found on the project website..

The project is led by the state of Rhineland‑Palatinate, with the participation of Baden‑Württemberg, Berlin, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig‑Holstein and (in an accompanying role) Thuringia.

The cross‑state initiative eduCheck digital (EDCD) aims to develop a joint evaluation procedure for digital educational media.

The goal of EDCD is to develop criteria, standards, procedures, and technical systems for evaluating digital educational media so that these can be used in the classroom in a technically reliable and legally compliant manner.

The increasing need for suitable digital educational media has become evident—not only since the beginning of the COVID‑19 pandemic. The range of available products for schools is diverse and constantly evolving. Teachers are heavily burdened, both in terms of time and expertise, when required to review the technical and legal aspects of digital textbooks, educational software, or apps. For the federal states, this results in a considerable increase in workload related to approval and evaluation procedures for these digital resources.

EDCD simplifies these review processes by developing and testing common overarching standards and procedures. This also includes establishing the required technical infrastructure, such as providing test environments, building an online collaboration platform for participating stakeholders, and creating a web presence to continuously publish up‑to‑date evaluation criteria.

Further information can be found on the eduCheck-website.

The FWU – Institute for Film and Picture in Science and Education, the media institute of the federal states, has been commissioned to implement the project.
All federal states participate in the eduCheck digital initiative.
Project leadership lies with Rhineland‑Palatinate.

VIDIS, the “Clearing Service for Digital Identity Management in Schools,” provides access to digital educational services for teachers, students, and pupils using their existing school accounts.

In February 2021, VIDIS officially launched as a joint project of the German federal states, developed by the FWU, within the framework of the DigitalPakt Schule. The aim is to establish a single login for all schools in Germany, meaning that more than 800,000 teachers and nearly 11 million students will be able to use VIDIS. To achieve this, existing portals operated by schools, school authorities, and federal states are intelligently connected to a wide range of digital educational services through a uniform interface.

In the future, school users will be able to log in to a large variety of services using their existing personal school accounts via single sign‑on (SSO). This login is protected under data‑privacy regulations—for example through pseudonymization and additional safeguards—so that authentication through the VIDIS service is compliant with data‑protection requirements in all participating 16 federal states. At the same time, VIDIS ensures that providers of digital educational services—such as digital textbooks, learning platforms, and learning apps—can rely on a consistent technical and organizational interface, usable across state borders.

Further information can be found on the project website, or you may contact the VIDIS team directly.

The FWU – Institute for Film and Picture in Science and Education, the media institute of the German federal states, has been commissioned with implementing the project.
All federal states participate in VIDIS.
Project leadership lies with Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania.

MUSES – a School‑Authority‑Centered IT Infrastructure Project

The goal of the MUSES project is to support school authorities in providing essential IT services to schools in a centralized manner. To achieve this, MUSES develops an IT operations concept that is introduced, tested, and documented in co‑production with pilot school authorities. This reduces the administrative workload on schools while simultaneously professionalizing IT operations. A key factor for the project’s success is determining which services can be offered centrally by school authorities—and which cannot.

The project begins with an analysis phase, during which pilot school authorities and project managers exchange needs and requirements. Based on this foundation, a concept is developed, technology is deployed on site, and suitable operating and support options are tested. The project will be complemented by a prototype of a web‑based administration interface, designed to make it easier for school authorities to centrally carry out IT administrative tasks.

MUSES: The Model Solution for School‑Authority‑Centered IT Deployment in Schools

MUSES is a joint project of the Free State of Saxony, North Rhine‑Westphalia (subject to the results of a feasibility study), and Baden‑Württemberg.
Project leadership lies with Baden‑Württemberg.

LICENCE CONNECT – License Broker

The aim of the LICENCE CONNECT initiative is to develop a technical service for the brokerage and management of license information, enabling schools, school authorities, and federal states to procure, allocate, and provide digital educational resources to users as easily as possible.

Currently, there is no adequate way to map the licensing of digital educational resources within existing systems. Although the federal states operate powerful infrastructures for managing licenses for traditional media—such as schoolbook lending—these systems are heterogeneous, widely distributed, and no longer cover a range of current use cases related to the procurement and distribution of digital educational resources. As a result, there is a need for a robust license intermediary that is both integrated into the federal states’ systems and capable of reflecting the working processes of school authorities and schools.

At present, many different projects, initiatives, and products fulfill parts of these tasks, but none of them provide an interoperable layer that connects all systems. There is a clear need for tighter integration between existing solutions. Furthermore, an interface‑based service would allow current and future licensing and billing models to be managed at regional and supraregional levels and evaluated to ensure legally compliant, user‑specific media availability for learners and teachers. In particular, integration with authorization mechanisms in state systems—such as the VIDIS infrastructure—offers strong potential.

Implementation of the project is intended to be commissioned to the FWU – Institute for Film and Picture in Science and Education, the media institute of the federal states.

The participating federal states are:
Baden‑Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine‑Westphalia, Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania, Rhineland‑Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony‑Anhalt, and Schleswig‑Holstein.

Project leadership lies with Rhineland‑Palatinate.

The federal states are increasingly dependent on hosting applications and systems in professionally operated data‑center architectures, as previous on‑site solutions in schools or state institutions are reaching their limits—particularly with regard to dynamic scalability.

Experiences already gathered in the participating states show that data centers used for the school sector must meet special requirements. School operations differ significantly from those of commercial enterprises. Data centers must be flexible enough to accommodate the diverse usage scenarios and usage times typical of schools.

The project aims to create a scalable and agile environment that can flexibly respond to varying patterns of demand. At the same time, a cloud infrastructure tailored to the needs of the school education sector—based on the requirements of the federal states—significantly improves IT security and data‑protection compliance in schools. In particular, it addresses the heightened security requirements associated with processing data belonging to minors.

Given the diverse structural conditions across the participating states, this cross‑state initiative provides improved opportunities to develop and operate statewide and cross‑state solutions. For example, in the future, online workspaces for teachers could be developed based on a shared technology platform while still allowing for state‑specific adaptations. Such an approach would enable a cost‑efficient solution that leverages synergies. Through the exchange among participating states, all partners can mutually benefit from each other’s developments and solutions.

Project Objective

The goal of the project is to develop a joint cloud‑infrastructure solution that addresses the specific needs of the school sector while fulfilling the varying requirements of the federal states.

Participating States

The project involves the states of Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine‑Westphalia, and Rhineland‑Palatinate.
Project leadership lies with Hamburg.

The Metadata for Educational Media (MEM) project is an extension of the joint nationwide educational media infrastructure SODIX, which provides educational media across federal states via standardized interfaces. The educational media are described using extensive metadata, making them discoverable. As part of MEM, this metadata standard will be expanded to include competence and content descriptions from the curricula.

In recent years, the availability of digital teaching materials has grown enormously, resulting in a wide variety of didactic resources in digital form. This often confronts teachers with long lists of results when searching for educational media, which must then be manually checked according to individual requirements and needs. The MEM project aims to enable teachers to carry out precise searches along the curricula specific to their federal state. The result is a list of hits directly related to the concrete curriculum topic. Here, the educational media are described based on the competencies defined in the curricula.

Implementation is carried out by extending the metadata standard for educational media. This makes it possible to comprehensively describe each individual curriculum. To achieve this, the curricula are being converted into a machine-readable format in collaboration with the 16 federal states. In addition, a technically uniform vocabulary is to be established to make educational media comparable across the federal states and to allow levels of proficiency to be assigned. To represent similarity relationships between learning content, the implementation of extensive knowledge spaces in a knowledge graph is planned. This enables a structured and efficient representation of relationships between subject content and supports a deeper understanding of the knowledge structure.

Further information can be found on the project website.

The FWU, the media institute of the German federal states, has been commissioned to implement the project. Fifteen federal states are participating in the Metadata for Educational Media (MEM) project. Responsibility for the project lies with Hamburg.

Objective

The aim is to develop and launch a digital infrastructure as a platform providing free information and interaction services for teachers at all vocational schools in Germany (approx. 125,000 in the 2018/2019 school year). The portal is intended to ensure the long-term provision, exchange, and updating of documents and materials for teachers at vocational schools.

Initial Situation

With the framework curricula for vocational instruction in vocational schools, binding nationwide standards exist for the competencies to be taught during training. This creates highly favourable conditions for cross-state cooperation. Making use of this potential in vocational education and training is the core intention of the project.

The high relevance of the undertaking becomes particularly clear in view of the enormous diversity and high degree of specialization of the training occupations (currently over 320), which systematically present major challenges for vocational school teachers. Added to this are new demands arising, for example, from the rapid pace of technological and digital developments in many occupational fields, as well as increased pedagogical requirements due to an increasingly heterogeneous student population that must be supported through measures such as individual learning support, differentiated instruction, and language support.

Compounding these challenges is the fact that teaching and learning materials for many occupations are either insufficiently available or not accessible at all. Materials provided by the state institutes, materials developed and tested by teachers themselves, and the expertise available locally at vocational schools offer great potential that can and should be tapped for a broad audience of users.

Project Goal

Unlocking these existing resources and harnessing the resulting synergies is the aim of the Portal for Vocational Education and Training.

A central element of the concept is a two-part structure consisting of an open and a closed section. The state institutes are responsible for designing the content of the open section. The closed section is available to all teachers at vocational schools for the exchange of teaching-support materials, as well as for communication and collaboration. This cooperation allows unused potentials to be activated, relieving the workload of teachers, strengthening innovation capacity, and improving the quality of teaching.

All federal states are participating in the project. The lead responsibility lies with Baden-Württemberg.

North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony are developing an innovative teaching and learning approach for vocational education and training within the framework of the DigitalPakt Schule through the project “Networked Future Labs” at two vocational schools in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. The approach focuses on digital technologies (including digital twins). In addition to the key areas of automation technology and AR/VR technologies, the project also integrates information technology, business studies, product design, and the vocational fields of health care, nursing, and social pedagogy.

The project centres on strengthening students’ vocational action competence through digitalisation and interdisciplinary collaboration. The delivery of training content as well as the meta-competencies essential for digital transformation processes is to take place within the context of product planning, broadly conceived as a project-based process. In line with constructivist learning, this represents an application-oriented extension of instructional scenarios.

Vocational schools thus become development laboratories — “Enterprise 2.0.” Here, ideas originating from work-related contexts are generated, discussed, and assessed for feasibility. Beyond that, the aim is to automate, produce, and market whatever is deemed forward-looking and viable for production within this innovation hub.

Within collaborative structures, training programmes in metal and electrical occupations work together with information technology and future business specialists. Students in nursing and social pedagogy are also involved as contributors in the Future Lab, where possible applications of digital technologies are further developed.

Each year, at least two cross-state projects are fully developed — from the initial product idea to market readiness — and implemented in cooperation with the project partners. Further information is available on the project website.

The further development and required operation of the cross-state networked digitalisation lab are carried out on behalf of the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony by the two vocational schools: Berufskolleg Höxter and BBS Georg-von-Langen-Schule Holzminden. Project leadership lies with North Rhine-Westphalia.

School Sports Arena: Central Platform for Integrating, Communicating, and Implementing Nationwide School Sports Initiatives and Programs

The School Sports Arena is a central platform for improving the didactic integration, communication, and implementation of nationwide school sports initiatives and programs, particularly the school sports competition “Youth Trains for the Olympics and Paralympics.”

The following objectives are pursued:

1. Supporting teachers by consolidating information and materials

Up to now, nationwide school sports initiatives and programs—for example those of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and its member organizations—have been communicated to schools and their teachers through a wide variety of platforms, and in some cases also organized through these platforms.
The School Sports Arena provides teachers with information, materials, and methodological-didactic guidance on nationwide school sports initiatives in one central location, thereby reducing the effort required for research.
Through an optional registration, teachers can also be notified about new school sports initiatives or changes to existing ones.

2. Supporting teachers in the methodological-didactic integration of school sports initiatives into school sports

The School Sports Arena supports teachers in the methodological-didactic integration of school sports initiatives into school sports.
It offers the possibility to illustrate the following aspects particularly clearly using visual support materials such as photos, graphics, and videos:

• the setup of game and exercise stations,
• guidance on assisting and securing,
• suggestions for organizational implementation with sports groups in school sports facilities, and
• modules for the methodological-didactic introduction of students to the target game or target exercise as part of a lesson or teaching unit.

This particularly helps teachers incorporate new competition formats, game formats, or trend sports into school sports and teach them successfully.

In addition, the platform provides teaching modules that can be used directly in class, focusing on conveying Olympic values, doping prevention, and the prevention of violence in sports.

3. Supporting the preparation, implementation, and evaluation of the national finals of “Youth Trains for the Olympics & Paralympics” and other nationwide school sports competitions

The School Sports Arena supports the implementation of the national final events of “Youth Trains for the Olympics and Paralympics” and other nationwide school sports competitions. It shortens work steps, makes them more sustainable, and optimizes communication with the participating schools.
Interfaces to the respective state portals ensure compatibility with competitions at state level.

The School Sports Arena project is implemented by the German School Sports Foundation on the basis of financial contributions from the federal states. After the test phase, the platform will be operated by the German School Sports Foundation.

All federal states participate in the School Sports Arena project. The project is led by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The goal of the project is the development and commissioning of a modular infrastructure for cross-state and cross-phase OER content in teacher education, aimed at the professionalization and networking of teachers in inclusive schools.

The foundation of this development is the SODIX platform of the Institute for Film and Science in Education (FWU), which, as a joint educational media infrastructure of the German federal states, already offers basic functions and interfaces. This platform is now to be adapted to meet the specific needs of teacher education and the cross-state, cross-institutional, and cross-phase development of open educational resources. In the interest of long-term sustainability, the project builds upon the existing platform and adds, in particular, features to support collaboration in teams. Further information can be found on the project homepa.

The project involves the federal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Berlin, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, and Bremen. Overall coordination is led by Schleswig-Holstein.