German federal regulations restrict the adoption of software that is successfully used in education in other parts of the world. Teachers are strictly banned from using cloud services, social platforms, micro-blogs, or document sharing tools that are hosted outside of the EU, because of these technologies’ lack of (full) compliance with EU standards for privacy and data protection, telemetric practices, and the imponderables of data leaving EU territory. Germany proudly has world’s possibly strictest privacy and information protection legislation. The general ruling is not based on the aim of ‘securing’ data access and transport, but on the idea of Datensparsamkeit which could be translated as ‘data minimalism’ or ‘data austerity’ (Fowler 2013): the less data you store, the less data can be misused. While in some countries data is perceived as the ‘new oil,’ as a resource to run new businesses, Datensparsamkeit suggests that the best data is no data at all. Unsurprisingly, ambitious field research in learning analytics, which is often based on the exploitation of private data (Prinsloo and Slade 2014; Williamson 2017), is scarce. The exception that proves the rule is research on ‘trusted learning analytics’ carried out by Hendrick Drachsler’s group (2016).
Current school solutions are typically based on open source products, operated by states or regional school boards, on servers situated within national (or EU) boundaries. In order to avoid usage of software applications that could make data openly available to USA or other nations’ intelligence agencies, some states provide EU-compliant alternatives for document sharing and repository services. German universities have established a cooperative company, HIS Hochschul Informations System eG, Hannover, to develop administrative software solutions that operate according to EU data protection and privacy regulations. Ironically, in early 2020, a bug was encountered within the jointly developed student information system that was able to reveal personal data of all (!) students from nearly all public universities in Germany (Tremmel 2020). Digital textbooks need approval by state authorities and are hardly available. Due to inferior school infrastructure, book publishers are reluctant to invest in a somewhat unsure future—leaving not just production, but also development of expertise, to others.
Contradictions between Germany’s success in producing cutting-edge technology, and German caution when it comes to using digital technology in daily educational routines, are a fascinating research topic in their own right. Very briefly, they could be related to early nineteenth century Romanticism and its skeptical attitude towards technology at large. Furthermore, they could be associated with German more recent experiences of surveillance. Most Germans know (of) a person that has suffered either from the fascist regime 1933–1945 or from the communist regime 1945–1989 (in eastern part of Germany). Both regimes heavily relied on mass surveillance and total control of public opinion, which was especially prominent in broadcasting, newspapers, schools, and universities. For Germans, misuse of information is not an imagined danger at the horizon but a vivid experience reported by older generations. Mass murder of Jewish people was organized using a tabulator machine from German branch of IBM called Dehomag (Black 2012); population census used punch cards, where the infamous ‘column 22’ indicated a person with Jewish background (Luebke and Milton 1994). Germans’ ambivalent relationship to technology cuts across many different aspects of German culture, including philological and educational heritage. Its citizens may be successful engineers, yet it is hoped that they will also become well-rounded persons through Bildung.
For educators and educational (technology) researchers, the Covid-19 crisis rapidly opens new questions and develops new perspectives. Suddenly, and against earlier resistance against digital teaching and learning, teachers experience a steep learning curve while they implement all sorts of digital tools and materials in their work. They are caught by surprise when they find out that their university does not have a conference tool to communicate with more than 25 students at the same time, or that their university has limited student access licenses to online library materials. Their hectic attempts at compensation are aggravated by the ‘no-use’ policy for software hosted outside the EU or non-compliant with the European data protection regulations (GDPR). A solid video conferencing software serving, for example, 30,000 students at a larger university, does not seem easily available from an EU-compliant supplier. To stress that these rushed activities should not be equated with e-learning, distance education, or another form of carefully planned and administered online learning experience, Germany has quickly picked up the term ‘remote teaching’ (Hodges et al. 2020).
In response to its recent history, Germany is one the few world’s nations where freedom of research and teaching is codified in the constitution (Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz 2020: Art 5). Amongst other things, this constitutional right implies that teachers can freely choose whether they want to use digital technology. During the Covid-19 crisis, discussions have emerged about the consequence of ‘remote teaching’ pointing to access inequities. While many teachers have heavily invested in remote teaching with digital tools, some teachers have demanded the immediate stop of the promotion of digital tools. For instance, a group of scholars from the well-respected Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, with the support of many other professors from other universities, demanded the cancelation of studies for the summer semester (#nichtsemester 2020).