2024-10-10, 17:50–18:20 (Europe/Luxembourg), 42 Cluster 3
The Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing (LUCET) seeks to determine if Luxembourg schools are achieving their educational goals. This research unit of the University of Luxembourg conducts standardized tests with thousands of students each year to objectively assess key skills, academic performance and teaching quality. The online assessment system for these tests is delivered on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) cluster. In conjunction with SUSE Manager and the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension, LUCET achieves highly efficient, secure and reliable operation of this critical application. SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) Micro not only allows them to deploy edge solutions very efficiently but also provides the capability to roll out the assessment system as a mobile solution in schools.
The journey to open source LUCET was founded to assess and improve the quality of the national education system in Luxembourg. LUCET’s most prominent and resource-intensive project is the Épreuves Standardisées (ÉpStan), a Luxembourg school monitoring program that aims to facilitate evidence-based decision making in national education. Through the ÉpStan, LUCET is not only providing timely and policy-relevant information to national educational stakeholders, but also assembling a unique and incredibly rich database about the evolution of students’ competency profiles and their pathways through school — and possibly through life. For the implementation of the standardized tests, LUCET developed the online assessment system OASYS in 2010. Over the years, this solution went through several evolutionary stages. The first versions of the online assessment system were hosted on Apple servers, which often required an enormous administrative effort. When Apple discontinued support for Mac OS X Server, LUCET initially switched to Oracle Solaris. However, this operating system was also eventually discontinued by the manufacturer. The IT team was once again faced with the challenge of finding a suitable system 3 platform to run OASYS. In the meantime, LUCET received a mandate from the Luxembourg Ministry of Education to test up to 12,000 students per year according to standardized procedures, significantly increasing OASYS’s requirements for performance and availability. As a result, the team responsible for the development and deployment of OASYS and the online tests had grown from 11 to 50 people. “We were looking for an easily scalable platform that could meet the demands of nationwide testing,” says Markus Scherer, infrastructure and architecture engineer at LUCET. “At the same time, we wanted to increase the pace of innovation and enable our developers to take advantage of new technologies as quickly as possible. It became clear that an open source operating system with professional support was the only option for us.”
Emiel Brok has lived and breathed the open source philosophy for over 20 years. He trusts the ’Power of Many’ and ’Public Money Public Code’ to continuously change the world into a better place. He also hosts an online show around Open Source and music called The Friday Ketchup. Emiel promotes open source technologies like Linux, K8s, NeuVector and AI as SUSE Ambassador.
Linux System Administrator and open-source enthusiast.
Open-source technology is more than just software; it's a movement that empowers individuals and communities. By sharing knowledge and resources, we can create a more equitable and innovative world.