Every day, thousands of students and teachers use FCCN 's services in areas such as knowledge or collaboration. Find out about the ways in which the FCCN Unit supports the academic community in Portugal.
#1 eduroam. Connect to the world
Available in more than 100 countries, the eduroam service has become a regular presence on the campuses of higher education institutions. In Portugal - which was one of the founding countries of this service - there are 79 institutions connected to eduroam, thus providing secure Internet access to their communities.
This service is managed in Portugal by the FCT's FCCN Unit, which guarantees all members of the academic community a valid access credential at any access point on this worldwide network. For this reason, with the same login, it is possible to access the Internet in various locations throughout the country and the world.
In 2022, eduroam recorded an all-time high in authentications. A total of 6.4 billion eduroam authentications were registered worldwide during 2022, a 70% increase on 2021.
#2 Filesender. Send large files safely
Ideal for those who need to send and share large files, Filesender is another of the Unit's services FCCN with added value for the academic and research community.
Through this web application, it is possible for authenticated users (through the RCTSaai service) to send and temporarily store large files, whose data are hosted in Portugal.
The maximum upload limit is 100 Gb, which makes this a very useful solution for situations in which the file you want to send is too large to be sent by e-mail. There is also the advantage that it can be sent to several recipients simultaneously (up to a limit of 100), from a single upload .The files are available for 30 days.
Over the last few years, the increased use of this service has led to the strengthening of the software and hardware that underpin it.
#3 Educast. Share your work
For all students and teachers who want to record, share or disseminate their academic work in video format, Educast is the ideal tool. Through this platform it is possible to easily record, edit and publish contents such as papers, classes or presentations . To do so, all you need is a personal computer and the recording and editing platform available online.
Over the last few years, Educast has introduced several new features, following the launch of a new HTML5 editor at the end of 2020. In addition to various improvements in accessibility and usability, it is now possible to enrich content metadata and create editable descriptions, for example. Also noteworthy is the service's new landing page, where the main focus is on searching for content on the platform.
In 2022, the new Educast Recorder was launched. The application is available for download and is compatible with windows and mac operating systems. The software allows simple and intuitive recording of educational content, enabling the capture of two synchronous sources simultaneously (video, audio and data).
In 2022, Educast saw around 5,651 educational videos published, with a total of 234,797 minutes produced. The service also saw an increase of 7,562 new users and 554 new channels created by them.
#4 b-on and #5 RCAAP. Find information
What do you do when you need to supplement a bibliography? Two of the services FCCN are the main allies of teachers, students and researchers in this task: the Online Knowledge Library (b-on) and RCAAP (Portuguese Open Access Scientific Repositories).
b-on offers unlimited and permanent access to thousands of journals and e-books published by some of the main international publishers. This scientific content relates to various subject areas that range from the Social Sciences and Humanities to the areas of Science, Technology and Medicine . By aggregating the institutions' search in a centralized negotiation, b-on enables its members to have access to a much more complete set of contents - something that, individually, would not be economically feasible.
In 2022, b-on recorded very significant growth, providing access to 64 institutions, representing a total of 420,000 potential users. During the year, a total of 19.5 million downloads were made, an increase of 12.5% on the previous year.
RCAAP provides users with a platform for storing, preserving and promoting open access to scientific knowledge produced in Portugal . It is a single point of search, discovery, location and access to thousands of scientific and academic documents, including journal articles, conference papers, theses and dissertations, distributed by the repositories that integrate the network, both national and Brazilian.
RCAAP currently aggregates more than 905,770 documents from 27 repositories hosted on the SARI service, 36 scientific journals hosted on the SARC service, 96 communities hosted on the Common Repository, 26 repositories with their own management and 181 scientific journals also with their own management. It also aggregates more than 1,970,000 documents from the Brazilian aggregator, OASIS.BR. These aggregated documents generated more than 25 million downloads in 2022.
#6 Hummingbird. Communicate at a distance
This web collaboration service makes it possible to hold remote classes and meetings in a secure environment. With the capacity to hold videoconferencing sessions for up to 300 participants (with audio, video, text, images, screen and whiteboard sharing), Colibri saw its use rise very significantly in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Between September 2021 and June 2022, the Colibri videoconferencing service registered about 1.8 million meetings involving an aggregate total of more than 15 million participants. In total, these meetings occupied almost one billion minutes, and 16,300 new users were registered during the same period.
Over the last few years, Colibri has been improving the integration of the service with other distance learning support platforms. In addition to integration with Moodle, it has recently become possible to open collaborative applications in one session, securely, without the need to share a page, application or external site.
In order to support the community in using this new feature, a dedicated page has been created on the Colibri help site containing the main recommended applications. It should be noted that direct access to the Zoom API will continue to be restricted to the FCCN Unit, for security reasons, and that all untested applications will always have to go through the testing and approval process of the service management.
#7 Arquivo.pt. Travel in the past
Thanks to Arquivo.pt, it is possible to find information published online since the 1990s, through a simple and intuitive way of searching, and to consult web pages from the past . This information could be relevant for academic work and scientific research, for example, or for use in the classroom, with the possible creation of case studies in areas such as Design, Social Sciences or Information Technology.
Over the last few years, the service has included new features, and it is now possible, for example, to search for images from the past. In 2023, 987 million distinct images from the Web's past are searchable on Arquivo.pt, after more than 11 billion pages have been processed, for a total of more than 1,000 TB of archived data, corresponding to the time period from 1992 to 2022.
In 2022, Exame Informática distinguished Arquivo.pt as "the best digital service of the year", with the award to be presented at the end of November 2022 in Lisbon.
Another of the service's initiatives of special interest to the academic community is the Arquivo.pt Prize - an annual initiative that honors innovative work based on preserved historical information. Entries can be on any subject area (e.g. Education, History, Sociology, Communication, Health, IT).
#8 NAU. Betting on training
Attending higher education - whether as a student or teacher - presupposes an active approach to learning, regularly supplementing the knowledge acquired. This is where the NAU Platform is an asset for all members of the academic community, offering free online courses (MOOCs) in a variety of areas ranging from Health to Cyberbulling, Personal Data Protection or Education.
In April 2023, this service of the FCCN Unit celebrated four years of existence. Since it was founded in 2017, the NAU platform has made available a total of 286 editions of 173 courses produced by 46 different entities. 2022 was another year marked by growth. In addition to 150,000 registrations for NAU courses (an increase of 15% on the previous year) and a total of 65,000 certificates issued (an increase of 120% on 2019), the highlight was the 52,000 new registrations on the platform.
It is worth noting that a significant number of the member organizations are higher education institutions, which shows the connection between this service and the academic community, with the possibility of tailor-made training courses.
#9 Studio. Create top content
The Studio FCCN provides professional equipment for the production of audiovisual content for the entire higher education community. To this end, it has high-definition equipment for capturing audio and video, such as professional video cameras (4K), Teleprompter, Lighting or Chroma Key, as well as specialized technical support.
In 2022, this structure underwent a technological upgrade, and the improvements implemented concern both the infrastructure and the technology used. From the point of view of the infrastructure, one of the main innovations is the creation of a voice-over booth with acoustic treatment that allows voice-overs to be recorded in a controlled space with professional quality. On the other hand, new spaces have been created such as a waiting room and technological demonstrations, a dressing room, a technical room and a storage room.
The refurbishment of the FCCN Studio also aimed to implement a technological upgrade , with the updating of the tricaster realization system , allowing 4K virtual realization and scenography in real time and the use of NDI technology, which allows video to be transmitted over IP. "This is the most significant upgrade carried out at the FCCN Studio since its birth in 2009," said Nelson Schäller, manager of the Multimedia service.
Through this structure, students will be able to create videos to complement their academic project, while teachers and researchers will be able to produce pieces to publicize their scientific project, for example. Webinar broadcasts (live or deferred) and the creation of digital classes are other possibilities available to higher education teachers.
Use of the studio FCCN is subject to reservation. To consult the calendar and make a request for use, visit: https://webcq.fccn.pt/colaboracao/estudio/.
