November, 2010

Students To Have Online Access to Lecture Notes, Books, Resources in Every Higher Education Campus

In a major technological development announced today, Ireland moves closer to a higher education system where courses can be delivered across campuses, students can access a vast array of educational and related material in a single, simple transaction and researchers can more easily collaborate in their work across several institutions.

HEAnet, Ireland’s National Research & Education Network, today launch Edugate, a new service that allows educational institutions in Ireland to share and access online resources, including lectures, electronic books and journals and student records.

Until the arrival of Edugate, institutions needed to create user accounts for every online service for which their staff and students required access. As a result, today’s campus user has a lengthening list of user accounts covering a growing myriad of online services (e.g. email, journals, calendar, content portal, etc). It was also a cumbersome process to gain access to information and materials in other higher education institutions. HEAnet has now reduced this list to just one user access mechanism: Edugate.

Now, where a student or member of staff logs on to Edugate, he or she will have access to everything they need in their own institution but also to relevant resources in other higher education institutions. So, a student in the University of Limerick can access an electronic journal stored in NUIG or a staff member in Cork Institute of Technology can check the academic performance of a student who previously studied in Tralee. The new system is at the cutting edge of work in this area in Europe and will result in major efficiencies across the higher education system.

Edugate also hits the right data privacy buttons and HEAnet’s approach to protecting user privacy within Edugate has generated positive feedback from the Data Protection Commissioner’s office. “Edugate bridges the gap between proving your identity online and retaining control of your personal data by ensuring that only the minimum amount of personal data is shared with appropriate safeguards in place” according to Gary Davis, Deputy Irish Data Protection Commissioner. With today’s launch of Edugate, HEAnet, with the support of the higher education institutions, has taken another step in the delivery of cost-effective shared services to the Irish education and research community.

John Boland, CEO of HEAnet stated that, “Edugate represents another excellent example of HEAnet collaborating effectively with the universities, institutes and colleges and responding to their collective need for cost-effective shared services”.

Edugate is funded by the Higher Education Authority’s Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions through the e-INIS National e-Infrastructure programme.

For more information please visit: www.edugate.ie

For further details, please contact:
Ronan Byrne or Glenn Wearen at HEAnet
Tel: 087 673 8561 or 01 – 660 9040
www.heanet.ie

About HEAnet:

HEAnet is Ireland’s National Education and Research Network, and is a world-class provider of high quality Internet services to Ireland’s Universities, Institutes of Technology and the research and educational community, including all Irish primary and post-primary schools. It provides a high-speed national network with direct connectivity for its community to other networks in Ireland, Europe, the USA and the rest of the world.

Established in 1984 by the seven Universities with the support of the Higher Education Authority to promote the interchange of information electronically within third level education, HEAnet now plays a critical role in establishing Ireland as a global centre of excellence in Internet activity. These advanced Internet services are essential for HEAnet’s client community to develop the skills needed in the global information society.

About e-INIS:

e-INIS, the Irish National e-Infrastructure, provides Ireland’s research community with access to world-class computational, networking and support infrastructure. Coordinated by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies together with a number of key infrastructure and institutional partners, the project provides researchers from a wide range of disciplines with the best of ICT resources including leading-edge HPC, communications and data storage services. The project is funded by the Higher Education Authority under the Programme for Research on Third Level Institutions.