The videoconference facilities now available at all Scottish Universities were publicised at a launch held on Tuesday 17th Feb. The launch was of course a distributed event: University Principals were invited and each brought a senior colleague with them to the University of Strathclyde, and nominated another senior colleague to attend at another videoconference room somewhere in Scotland. Guests included representatives from SHEFC, JISC, UKERNA, IT initiatives such as JTAP, and other guests.

The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) has funded the installation of at least one high-quality videoconference room at each HEI in Scotland. All but two of the rooms are based on ATM technlogy, and are directly connected to Scotland's four ATM-based Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs). The rooms use world-leading technology; the sound is of CD quality, and the screen images are near-TV standard.

At present eight sites can take part in a single conference, and there is a gateway to the ISDN world so that sites outside Scotland can also take part. Audio is 'mixed', in other words the sound from all the rooms in a conference can be heard by all the participants; the video switches automatically so that the screen picture shows the person who is currently talking most consistently. Switching is quick and means that the normal meeting dynamics are possible; there are no pauses waiting for a participant to begin speaking.

Before the launch, the Principals took part in informal chat sessions with their senior colleagues 'back home' in studios on their local MAN. Then a string trio from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama performed a piece by Dohnanyi, which proved a great attraction. They enticed guests away from lunch and from an exhibition of MAN-based projects, and into the Senate room where the launch took place.

Eight sites took part in the launch, and delegates at all sites were able to watch the demonstrations, and contribute to the discussions that followed. The sites were:

Strathclyde Senate meeting room (ATM)
Dundee (ATM)
Ninewells Hospital and Medical School (ATM)
Edinburgh (ATM)
Paisley (ATM)
Northern College of Education (ATM)
Aberdeen ISDN room (ISDN6)
UKERNA (ISDN2)

Professor Richard Shaw, the convenor of the Committee of Scottish Higher Education Principals (COSHEP), gave a welcoming address. Dr Malcolm Bain, the Director of Information Technology Services at the University of St Andrews, explained the technology of the videoconference network. Slides for all the presentations were provided across a data line using NetMeeting and were controlled from the studio at the University of Edinburgh. The slides were visible on separate screens provided at all the sites in the conference.

The highlight of the launch event was the session of demonstrations of videoconferencing. First Peta Dunkley, the Associate Director of the Surgical Skills Unit at the Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, introduced us to the work of the Unit. Then the launch switched to an operating theatre at Ninewells Hospital where Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri was carrying out an operation using Minimal Access techniques - 'keyhole surgery' to you and me. Participants at Strathclyde and at the other videoconference rooms were able to see inside the patient's body and view the images that Sir Alfred was using to carry out the operation, relayed by the camera on the endoscope inside the patient's body. We could hear Sir Alfred discussing the operation with his colleagues, and were able to speak to him from Strathclyde. The images were extremely clear and enabled the audience to watch with baited breath while Sir Alfred put in a stitch.

That demonstration was a hard act to follow, but Dr Neil Pitcher of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Paisley managed to entice the audience to concentrate on Mathematics teaching while he explained how the SUMSMAN project (Scottish Universities Mathematics and Statistics across the MANs) has been teaching students by videoconference. He reported that Computer based self-assessment materials were proving very popular with students.

Dr Chris Cudworth from the Dept of Continuing Education at the University of Aberdeen used an ISDN6 connection to explain how classes are given to students in remote parts of Scotland. The quality of the pictures was good, but would not have been adequate for the surgical teaching that we had seen earlier. Chris used a visualiser to show us objects that he had brought into the studio (a skull, together with more mundane objects such as slides and books); again the quality was good but noticeably less detailed than is provided by an ATM connection.

Dr Charles Duncan of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Edinburgh explained how his project was developing materials for teaching in Remote Sensing, and were using the videoconference studios for weekly project meetings, and to deliver lectures. Lectures that previously he had to jump in a car and travel to give, he now gives via videoconference to a larger number of students than was possible before. He uses NetMeeting to display web-based teaching materials; this way, the remote studios can take control of the web application and change the parameters of the teaching materials. Charles can then take control back and explain the implications of the changes they have made.

The NetMeeting demonstration was the only part of the event that did not go as planned: NetMeeting hung at this point! However the audience viewed this as proof that the event hadn't been totally rigged from start to finish; when something went wrong this proved that the whole thing really was live and therefore risky!

Dr Ian Smith then spoke to us from the videoconference studio at UKERNA, which had been specially configured to operate on ISDN2, so that we could compare the quality of sound and pictures with ISND6 and with ATM based facilities. The difference was of course striking, the ISDN2 picture looking very jerky and unrealistic.

Professor Sir John Arbuthnott, Principal of the University of Strathclyde and Chair of the JISC, then chaired a lively discussion session which enabled members at remote sites to ask questions and provide answers. The meeting was assured that security was no more of a problem than was the case with a telephone call - it was as difficult for an unauthorised person to listen in to a conference as to listen in to a phone call. Plans for videoconferencing in the rest of the UK were discussed - at present the standard outside Scotland is for ISDN based videoconferencing. Professor John Sizer, the Chief Executive of SHEFC, summed up by discussing the ways in which the Scottish Higher Education Sector has taken advantage of the opportunities presented by new technology, and the subsequent strategic change processes that are proving of great benefit to participants in Higher Education. He brought the meeting to a close, offering SHEFC's congratulations on the achievements that he had seen that afternoon, together with good wishes for future activities.

The videoconference rooms are available for use by academics throughout Scotland. They can be booked by any member of staff and since the studios operate over the MAN networks, there are no telephone bills to worry about. The rooms are quality tested and built for ease of operation, so staff can reasonably expect just to walk into a studio and use it. At present the major use is for meetings: the committee organising the launch event held most of their meetings by videoconference. Predictably the rooms are already quite heavily used and usage is growing, both for meetings and for seminars, tutorials and lectures.