The manager of the Video Technical Service at the FCCN Unit, Nelson Schäller, highlights the importance of the role of Colibri in the context of social isolation, also revealing some new features for this service of the National Scientific Computing Unit (FCCN) of the FCT.
The constraints resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent suspension of in-person teaching activities have posed new challenges to the Colibri service. How significant is this challenge?
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a high demand from the community for digital collaboration and communication platforms, both synchronous and asynchronous. In this context, the Colibri service became in high demand, as a tool to support distance learning, to cope with isolation., maintain teaching activities, and bring people together now through remote work. Its use has become crucial to replace the in-person teaching activities previously carried out in classroom settings.
And how do you evaluate the response given, taking into account the needs of the community?
I think that, in general terms, we are able to adapt all services to the real needs of the community, quickly, agilely and reactively, in a new context and reality for which no one was prepared. The FCCN Unit immediately took measures to meet this high community demand. The service was progressively strengthened, both in terms of infrastructure and platform licensing, to meet the needs of the national academic community.
In addition to the technological challenges, this pandemic also involved a human dimension, in the sense that it was necessary to support, overnight, thousands of students, teachers, researchers and technical teams., who were forced to suddenly change their usage habits for these tools. This triggered support requests to our team, through a variety of communication channels (email, phone, tickets, messages, etc.).
Are there any numbers that illustrate this increase in usage?
Daily usage of the Colibri service reached unprecedented levels. Compared to the first four months of 2019, an increase in the number of meetings in the order of 3956%, totaling 396.069 meetings held and 7,270,632 participants. During the month of May, the platform recorded 409,748 meetings and a total of 5,842,315 participants. We currently have over 80,000 registered users. Usage charts can currently be consulted via the dashboard on the FCCN website.
«Compared to the first four months of 2019, we recorded an increase in the number of meetings of around 39,56%, accounting for a total of 396,069 meetings held and 7,270,632 participants»
What is the feedback received by the Education and Research community?
Overall, the feedback received has been very positive, as evidenced by the comments and posts shared on social media by the RCTS community. I think that closer contact with the community has also been beneficial., mainly in providing support and assistance in resolving difficulties in using the service, as well as in presenting alternative solutions adapted to the needs of users and participating institutions.
How is Colibri adapted to the needs of the Education and Research community? Were any adjustments made during the contingency?
The service was already widely used as a support tool for classes, work meetings, and online tutoring. Now, its use has gone beyond these uses and is even being used for master's and doctoral defenses, and even as a tool for monitoring online exams.
Due to the massive use of the service, some measures had to be taken additional measures, namely strengthening licensing in 1111%. It was also necessary to progressively reinforce the service's front-end infrastructure. To this end, new servers were added to balance user access to the service. in order to ensure the high demand for access to Colibri.
«Due to the massive use of the service, some additional measures had to be taken, namely the reinforcement of licensing in 1111%»
During this pandemic phase, it was also necessary to make changes to the RCTSaai federated authentication, granting “Pro” licensing only to teachers and staff of national HEIs. Students' accounts were now limited to 40-minute meetings and a maximum of 100 participants.
Do you think this increase will be entirely contextual? Or do you think the contingency will ultimately lead many teachers, students, and researchers to "discover" the added value of this service?
Clearly, this increase is due to the effects of the lockdown on the Portuguese population and, more specifically, on national higher education and research institutions. These institutions were forced to find alternative ways to maintain their teaching activities, thus trying to minimize as much as possible the collateral damage this pandemic has brought to curricular and academic levels. I think that the use of the service, after the pandemic, will be reduced, but it is expected that it will never return to its initial values., as the service is now regularly used by more than 80,000 users nationwide.
What is the future vision for the Colibri project? What are the next steps?
The future of Colibri looks promising and its use, adoption and appropriation by the community indicates that it will continue to be one of the most widely used synchronous communication tools at an academic level. We intend to reach more and more institutions, students, teachers and researchers and continue to serve the RCTS community with a varied range of services., which meets your educational needs.
In the future, we intend to improve the service's integration with the most widely used distance learning support platforms, as well as improve its coordination with other services provided by FCCN, such as Educast.In this context, I highlight the integration of Colibri with Moodle via LTI, which is now available and makes it easier to create and schedule meetings directly in courses and subjects, without having to leave Moodle.
We are also preparing some pilot projects for the service that will be presented during the second half of 2020, which will offer a series of new features. I highlight the possibility of requesting the webinar service on demand, for larger institutional events, which require the participation of more than 300 participants and a maximum number of 1000Internally, we are also exploring new Zoom Rooms capabilities for dedicated videoconferencing rooms at FCCN facilities.
From a communication point of view, We are still preparing to launch a new help site, which will be presented to the community soon.This portal will provide updated information about the service, news, best practices for use and safety, compatible equipment, and other information.
