Completion of cooperation project "bwLehrpool" / Outlook - bw-e-examinations

In December the project "bwLehrpool", a federative concept for the operation of larger desktop infrastructures, which was worked on in cooperation between higher education institutions in Reutlingen, Karlsruhe, Offenburg and Freiburg, will come to an end. It achieved a separation of administrative levels for hardware, basic system, and course content, and it gives teaching staff freedom in designing their courses. It will be continued in a module of the project bw-e-examinations, starting in January 2015. Ultimately it will be possible to offer it as a service in all of Baden-Württemberg.

Short presentation in Karlsruhe of the projects and of running cooperations through the Head of IT-Services Freiburg, Prof. Schneider.

In December the cooperation project "bwLehrpool" (see http://bwlehrpools.hs-offenburg.de/) is coming to an end. Much has been achieved, and a demo operation is running in Reutlingen, while production operations are running in Freiburg and Offenburg. The potential for a therefrom resulting service for all of Baden-Württemberg is already unfolding at individual higher education institutions.

Desktop-virtualization of "bwLehrpool" combines, on the basis of one single basic system, a flexible offer of diverse operation systems with easy administration for larger pc-landscapes. Research, lab, and teaching environments in consequence no longer need to be installed on desktops, which reduces maintenance effort of IT administrators. It also offers new freedom for teaching staff. They can individually design their work environment and exchange it across institutions. This allows higher education facilities to react fast to new developments and to be flexible in their use of existing resources, as well as to lessen the load of central IT services for repetitive standard tasks.

As a conclusion to the project, a workshop on 8 December 2014 in Karlsruhe brought together talks on the project components, system demonstrations and an outlook on a continuing project that builds on the previous one: "bwEKlausuren" (e-examinations). This project ensures the further development of "bwLehrpool" as a self-sustaining service. It is financed until December 2016 through MWK Stuttgart.