A new university that teaches students in some of the most remote classrooms in Britain with one of the world's largest videoconferencing networks continues to be formally launched in Inverness.
The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) has pioneered distance-learning by building one of the greatest digital networks of their kind to link 13 colleges and nearly 100 learning centres from the Outer Hebrides to coastal towns in the Highlands as well as on the north-east coast to Shetland.
Awarded full university status by the Privy Council earlier this week, UHI has successfully rewired the area by installing its own superfast broadband network over an area the size of Belgium, with videoconference suites at 60 websites.
Students - who may in a small classroom in Barra in the Western Isles, Scalloway in the Shetlands or on campus in Dingwall - are taught via a videoconferencing network that allows lecturers to reach students on high-definition television screens in up to nine various internet sites.
Students on 90 islands around Scotland can connect with its network, making use of typical high-speed telephone lines in a "virtual learning environment", accessing digital "blackboards" and messaging boards from laptops and home computers.
Its formal recognition as a university - nearly two decades after it was first proposed by the Highlands and Islands Development Board - was welcomed by Mike Russell, the Scottish education secretary.
He explained it was a vital increase to the region's vulnerable economy and its population. "The potential for this is large," he said. "It's making sure this area has all of the things that typical areas have, which will allow the Highlands and Islands to flourish."
Even though the population in some areas is rising, the location has historically suffered considerable net migration and it is heavily determined by subsidies and public sector employment.
One survey discovered there were 30,000 fewer people aged 19 to 39 in the Highlands and Islands than would be expected; most migrated to universities within the south or find jobs away from region. Early findings from an economic impact assessment for UHI suggest the university will generate up to £5 of extra spending for every £1 in state funding.
Professor Matthew MacIver, the UHI's chairman, said it would be a defining moment for the region, with the university being a "powerhouse" for its economic, social and cultural regeneration. "For centuries we've been exporting intellectual talent to all corners of the globe. We're now at a point where that flow might be reversed," he explained.
University Principal James Fraser said: "We're giving folks the opportunity to obtain a university education in their own area, to obtain rooted in their own region, so we can obtain the benefits of their youth, energy and creativity."
The university has been running for ten years as the UHI Millennium Institute, a federation of 13 higher and further education colleges and study institutes, including the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, the £50m alternative energy study institute at Thurso in Caithness along with the country's only Gaelic college, Sabhal Mor Ostaig, on Skye. A £70m "super campus" is being built outside Inverness as its new headquarters.
The university's curriculum includes archaeology taught in Orkney; Scottish history taught from Thurso; adventure tourism at Ardnamurchan; and dentistry from Dumfries. The school of oral sciences in Dumfries teaches students in Stornoway, Shetland and at Raigmore hospital in Inverness making use of 3D model heads fitted with internal miniature cameras.
Sean Mehan, UHI's head of integrated technology, said he believed the university's internal broadband and pc network, which covers a sixth of the UK's entire landmass but only one 60th of its population, was one of the world's most heavily employed.
The university ran more than 11,000 "multipoint" high-definition video conferences for lectures, seminars and administration meetings last year, every involving a minimum of 3 sites or more to 34,000 students. Mehan said this was more than every other British university combined.
The broadband and laptop or computer network, which stretches from Perth in the southern Highlands to Shetland, handled nearly five petabytes, or five billion megabytes, of information last year.
Mehan said it was equivalent to the whole workload handled by Janet, the UK universities personal computer network. Its system was so powerful, it was being utilized by the council, schools, health boards, the Scottish government, the investment agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise and companies in the region.
