Digitalization in schools can have different aspects – teaching aspects, digital literacy, and organizational improvements. Many articles consider digitalization in schools with a digital classroom: Digital learning material, whiteboards and tablets should be the answer on digitalization demand. But the transformation goes deeper into the organization: It includes internal workflows, speeds up communication between different stakeholders and gives new possibilities for collaboration. This article shows the current state of digitalization in German schools. Therefore the following paragraphs focus on requirements and restrictions for digital transformation in schools. The next part of this article describes current solutions with their constraints and possibilities. The article concludes with a description of relevant concepts for a scalable digitalization platform for schools with an example implementation called “DieSchulApp”.
14.2 Requirements and Restrictions for Digitalization in Schools
Schools in general are a special context for digitalization – there are special legal circumstances, social restrictions and technical requirements. They all have to be considered by the introduction of new digital tools in schools.
Need for digitalization in school is often discovered from the inside of the school family. Teachers realize a problem and try to search for a solution. Especially teachers for information systems, math and physics are firm to generate software with technologies like Excel, Access or basic programming knowledge with languages like VisualBasic, PHP or Java. Some also motivate pupils to develop a solution for an occurring problem. On the one hand this is a very good way to teach pupils software development and informatics with a real world problem. On the other hand it often results in amateurish software caused by the missing professional experience. In this case the alignment between business and IT is really high but can be improved with a better implementation and specialized knowledge on the side of IT.
The following paragraphs give an overview on the most critical parts and show the difficulty and various aspects of digital innovation in the environment of schools.
14.2.1 Legal Regulations
As an organization with a public mandate, schools are under special governmental control. The integration of software and autonomous, digital data handling is mostly related to privacy aspects and private data – but this is a complex situation for schools: Next to the German Data Protection Act (BDSG), there exists several local Data Protection Acts in Germany. As an example, a Bavarian school is bind to nine different laws and legal ordinances [1].
The complexity of different laws and by‐laws is a relevant showstopper for digital innovations and should be considered on all levels of school management while introducing new digital interaction possibilities.
14.2.2 Social Restrictions
Business transformation and especially digital transformation is a change process in every organization. It means to abandon old habits and acquire new ones. This is a necessary challenge for the headmaster to get in touch with the person concerned and integrate new tools and processes at the right time. Wrong timing or bad training of relevant key players can destroy the whole new plan.
One challenge in schools is the broad range of different subgroups: The group of teachers can be separated in digital/open‐minded and analog/closed‐minded people. While some teachers are very open to digital or new procedures, other employees don’t see the positives aspects and don’t want to change their habits. A broad range is inside the group of parents and families too: If a school wants to include pupils and parents into a digital process, they need a digital device like a personal computer or smartphone. While some families are very wealthy and a modern smartphone is not a problem, other families are not. Therefore it is necessary that digital tools in school don’t require e. g. the newest smartphone‐feature and ‐versions.
Digitalization, which affects the pupils of a school, has a direct impact on the media‐ and digital literacy of the children. As one example, if a school introduces an internal smartphone app for communication and collaboration, the app will be an important example of a reasonable way to use a smartphone. The students can learn that their phones are not only a game console but also a tool to interact with others with a meaningful topic and a professional matter. This process can be pushed in subjects like information technology as well as in interdisciplinary courses and improved with discussions about data privacy, the need for strong authentication methods and necessary content in such an app.
Every school employs a data protection officer, who has to ensure lawful processes and systems inside the organization. He also must clear software with data privacy aspects together with the headmaster. In most situations, a teacher takes this task additionally to his regular function. Though there exists advanced training and exchange between different data protection officers, the person is not deeply specialized to the different regularizations and possibilities. The resulting uncertainty can also block the intro of digital innovations, because new system will not be cleared.
The sum of such an opaque system with different laws and mostly not specialized staff for digital data privacy in schools is a big problem and should be considered as a special management task while introducing a new digital system in schools. In all cases, it is a crucial point for the headmaster to ensure an innovative spirit and to communicate the need for improvement and digital tools in the right way.
14.2.3 Technical Requirements
Digital tools in schools have to ensure different technical requirements, based on the systems purpose. One overall relevant and non‐function requirement is the focus on security. If the software deals with privacy data, it must be ensured that only authorized users have access to critical data – both in case of read‐ and write‐transactions. An example is software that manages grades and school certificates. It is the worst scenario that pupils can improve their grades without the knowledge of the teachers or a student is reported as absence in case he is truant or even worse kidnapped. Therefore, all systems should be bound behind a strong authorization process.
In most cases, users of software in schools are not deeply technical experienced. Thus, the user interface should be clear, easy and useable. Complex forms, distracting colors or the use of complex authentication‐methods will end in dissatisfaction and in the worst case in no use of the newly introduced software. This is a challenge for modern software development, because it has to be considered that today’s users like to decide on their own, which device they like to use. Some years ago, the most common system in schools was a personal computer with the operating system called Windows. Today’s technical map is more diversified: Beside of Windows as the standard system there exists several other systems like macOS, Android or iOS. All systems are connected through the Internet and teachers as employees or pupils and parents as customers of a school like to bring their own device (BYOD) for school matters. In contrast to companies there is no possibility to dictate the use of a special device to pupils or parents. Having this in mind, development for school‐wide digitalization innovations is more complex than ever.
Usually, software should be developed as a multi user systems, which is available from different workstations. Every user should be able to interact with the software from his own device with his own credentials. This enables distributed work, e. g. to cover sickness of one employee. It also guarantees that no passwords are shared between the employees, so it is possible to protocol the access to private data. Thus, concrete authentications of every single user as well as the access from different workplaces are critical technical requirements for digitalization in schools.
Particular in the modern world with the need of interactions between different software it is mandatory that software provide full import‐ and export‐possibilities. “API managem
ent is an enabler for process automation and digital workflows” [2]. This could be done in different ways (e. g. file‐exchange, XML/SOAP, REST) but it has to be documented and open for other developers to maximize the positive effects of digitalization inside the organization.
Another important part is the strategy for the operations and maintenance of the software: The whole database has to be stored against loss or technical defects in a backup. Like in all other cases, the backup has to implement the requirements of security: It has to be stored in a protected space and should also be encrypted if some gets through the barriers. Additionally it is recommended that the backup is done automatically on a regular basis and that the system supports the restoring‐process. Another topic for operations is to keep the software up‐to‐date: The system should be updated regularly along with the operating systems or other changing general requirements.
Summarized, it is to say that the development of digitalization software for schools is a challenging business and should be done with professional experience.
14.3 Digital Tools in Schools
The previous chapter shows the difficulties for digital business in schools and gives an insight in legal, social and technical restrictions and requirements. The following paragraphs show different examples for successful integration of digital tools in administrative workflows in schools. The list is not exhaustive but widely used in Germany. Most software is useable for only one special purpose:
14.3.1 Timetable Planning Software
The generation of a complete timetable for all classes in a school is a complex task: Every pupil/class and every teacher can only be at one place each time. The room planning management must ensure that the resources are available and the personal planning management must consider some special planning like part‐time workers or a longer illness. There also exist some special conditions – e. g. personal preferences of some teachers or concentration experiences of different classes. In addition, every class and age group has another number of courses of the same school subject. Table 14.1 shows two examples of such a software. Table 14.1Overview on different timetable planning software
Name
Website
Pricing model
Timefinder
timefinder.sourceforge.net
Open source and free
Untis Express
www.school-timetabling.com
309–441 € excl. Updates
14.3.2 Absence Management
A school has a special responsibility for their (underage) pupils: If one child doesn’t come to school in the morning, the secretary has to do research about his location and well‐being. Mostly, schools expect the parents to call the secretariat in the morning. They have to inform the school actively about the absence of the pupil on this day. A problem of this procedure are that the phone calls came all at the same time: If the school starts at 8 am, the parents call the school between 07:30 and 08:30 – in an average school with 700 pupils this can explode up to 80 phone calls in this time. Additionally, the secretary has to keep the overview on handwritten and signed absence excuses: The phone call is only for quick information, but for ensuring the illness is confirmed from the parents, a handwritten signed excuse is standard in schools. There is a huge demand for digital improvement in this scenario: Automated statistics and warnings if a student is absence periodically
Digital sick notes with digital signed sender
Immediate notification of relevant teachers after an incoming of a sick note
Nonetheless, some software already exists to support this process (see Table 14.2). Table 14.2Overview on different absence management software
Name
Website
Pricing model
MGSD
www.mgsd.de
280 € incl. Updates
Absenzen!
www.absenzen.de
Open source and free
Absenzen Manager 2
www.absenzen-manager.de
250 €
14.3.3 Substitution and Cover Planning
The timetable for pupils and teachers cover the standard and plan for the whole school year. It is very common that there are variations in the daily business: Regularly, teachers need to do a further training for their subject or their personal development. They can also be ill or with different reasons absent. In this case, another teacher has to undertake the working hours of the absent colleague. Only in exceptional cases, the lesson is changed to free time for the student. In both cases, the students and the supply teacher has to be informed as quick as possible.
Mostly, substitution plans are analog paperwork and are only visible at the same day in the morning. A first way of digitalization is the integration of TV screens to integrate multiple views on the display (e. g. the mensa menu card). In same cases, there already exists a possibility to export the supply lessons to websites or even smartphone‐apps. Table 14.3 shows a selection of such software. Table 14.3Overview on different substitution software
Name
Website
Pricing
Webuntis
untis.de/untis/webuntis/
658–3288 € [3]
VPM 8
www.dklinger.de/html
450 €
14.3.4 Central Pupil Management
Every school has to manage their pupils with all relevant information. There exists diverse information for each student. Table 14.4 only shows a part of available and necessary data. Table 14.4Overview on different data for pupils
Name
Address
Birthday
Actual class
Religion
Birth country
Date of joining school
Date of exit
List of parents
Class history
Reasons for retry class
Censures
The software for central pupil management is crucial for the daily work of the secretariat and to plan classes, teachers and rooms. If the government centralizes such software, it can also be used to predict the future demand of such resources – even to predict the demand for new schools. For this reason, Bavarian schools are forced to use such a comprehensive solution, called Allgemeine Schüler Verwaltung (ASV) [4].
14.3.5 Grade Management
Software for grade management is a big challenge for system‐provider: It needs strong requirements for security, because it is relevant aim for hacking students to improve their own grades. Nonetheless, such software should be open enough that every teacher can add new grades directly – independently from which place or system he works. Particular teachers are not directed to one place for marking the exams: They can do it at school, at home or even while traveling. Wherever they work, they have to have the ability to safe the results directly into the grade management software. In most cases, software uses a combination from username and password as protection. Thus, the security of the platform depends on the complexity of the password and therefore on the user. Additional security through 2nd factor authentication with systems like Authy [5] or KeyPocket [6] is recommended.
One example for software for grade management is “Notenmanager” [7] in Germany.
14.3.6 Events/Calendar
Like in every other organization, school is regularly the host of different kind of events. The following list provides an overview on different kind of dated activities in schools: Events for pupils like field days or examinations
Events for teachers like attended training courses or teacher’s conferences
Events for parents like parent’s evening
Global events like holidays.
A school has to synchronize all activities on a central platform and have to inform all related guests. For this task, ma
ny secretariats organize their calendar with a software like open exchange. Many schools also synchronize their parents calendar via export on the website. This has big disadvantages regarding security and data privacy and should not be recommended without an authentication method.
14.3.7 Parent Information Systems
Due to the age of pupils, communication to parents is a central task for the school. The standard of the analog age were letters to parents. They were printed and delivered by the pupils to the parents. In some cases, a return with an answer or a signature was necessary and again, the pupils acted as couriers. This procedure has several disadvantages: Every letter to the parents needs minimum a day since he reaches his destination. Sometimes, a letter does not reach the parents, because their child has forgotten to hand it over. Last but not least, a printed letter is expensive and harmful to the environment. There exist several approaches to digitalize this process: A software called “Eltern Portal” [8] provides a password‐protected website. Parents can pull information like event dates, messages or substitutions via their Internet browser, but are not notified actively. A similar system is provided by Untis [9]: A website provides information with calendar events, the current time table and substitutions. A smartphone app is connected to a service called WebUntis and shares information about the substitutions. The website and the smartphone app is protected with a password. Some schools provide important messages via SMS directly on the mobile phones of the parents. This is very expensive and complex to handle for the secretariat but notifies parents within minutes. A system called “ESIS” [10] sends out a newsletter on the technical standard of E‐Mail. This is a common way to send messages, but it is not a secure way: Every E‐Mail is sent unencrypted through the Internet.
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