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The URAN Association, the national research and education network (NREN) of Ukraine, presented its remote communications services to researchers and educators in a webinar on 25 March, including eduMEET, which was deployed with EU4Digital support through the EU-funded EaPConnect project.
The webinar on ‘Services for online learning and communication for the research and education community’ provided detailed information about the eduMEET and WebClass platforms offered by URAN. Around 120 participants heard about the services’ capabilities and examples of their use.
eduMEET
The web-based, secure online video-conferencing service eduMEET was developed by the NREN community in the EU-funded GÉANT project GN4-3. In March 2020, URAN quickly deployed this platform in Ukraine with the support of GÉANT and the EU-funded Up2U project, as well as EaPConnect.
“Every day, eduMEET is used by 60 to 120 Ukrainian users simultaneously,” URAN technical specialist Oleh Yurchenko said, while demonstrating eduMEET to the webinar participants in a virtual room that he created during the event.
WebClass
The WebClass video-conferencing platform is based on BigBlueButton, an easy-to-use open-source software. The webinar participants learned that many URAN users widely use WebClass for a variety of online events, from school-parent talks to business meetings and international scientific conferences. The webinar itself was held in URAN’s WebClass platform so participants could experience the service.
The next webinar in URAN’s series will focus on the eduGAIN authorisation system designed for research and education.
The EU4Digital: Connecting Research and Education Communities project (EaPConnect) aims to bring together research and education communities from EU and Eastern partner countries and to reduce the digital divide. The project will extend network infrastructure to scale up scientific exchange across borders, offer new services to enhance international R&E cooperation, strengthen national research and education networks (NRENs) in R&E ecosystems, and build knowledge, skills and collaborative working through events, training, and other initiatives.
