e-U Virtual Campus
The e-U Virtual Campus project was designed and is coordinated by Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), with technical support from the FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation (site in Portuguese). The project has created an extensive wireless network incorporating the country’s universities and polytechnic institutes into a single virtual campus with more than 5,000 access points through interinstitutional roaming, and also including services, content and applications made available to all the institutions.
In 2005, the number of higher education institutions with wireless networks in the scope of the e-U Virtual Campus project increased from 8 to 57, achieving 85% coverage of the entire higher education system - a range of schools with more than 300 thousand students.
e-U Users
A day at IST – Higher Technical Institute, Lisbon, in 2006 (image created in an IN+ – Study Centre for Innovation, Technology and Development Policies project)
(blue squares depict access points, each green segment indicates that a same individual user gained access at the very least during the period given via the access points linked by the segment)
A week at IST in 2006 (image created in an IN+ – Study Centre for Innovation, Technology and Development Policies project
This groundbreaking initiative enables higher education students, professors and researchers to access from any higher education school from anywhere in the country that is covered by the project the IT system and content of their own school as if they were physically there. The initiative has garnered significant international recognition and was the largest academic wireless network in the world before being copied in larger countries, such as France.
The national network is also connected to the Eduroam Network which includes all European Union countries.
The e-U: Virtual Campus project also involves developing academic services and content in each of the higher education institutions covered and making them available.
The objective is also to facilitate the use of IT applications of interest to higher education students through specific protocols with suppliers, such as the signing of the Protocol to Facilitate Autodesk Software Use in Higher Education and the protocol making Autodesk Software Free to Higher Education Students, Professors and Researchers, signed by Autodesk and Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) on 13th December and 5th December 2007 respectively.