Collaborative Remote Laboratories for Serving Sciences and Engineering Education in Iraq: Rexnet Project

Abstract

Currently, higher education systems in the Middle East and North Africa region face several challenges in terms of developing, learning, and teaching. For example, the higher education system in Iraq, which is the same as in other countries as a whole, has not adapted instructional technology into the education system efficiently. Nowadays, several technologies have been implemented (e.g. Remote Experimentation Labs and Virtual Reality) to serve the higher education systems and their teaching abilities, especially in Sciences and Engineering disciplinary. This paper presents a Remote Experimentation Labs project, named "Building a Remote Experimentation Network for serving higher education teachers and students in Iraq (REXNet)", that is implemented to serve students and teachers of Iraqi universities. It is a collaborative work among three universities (i.e. Duhok University, Zakho University, Duhok Polytechnic University) in Kurdistan Region-Iraq and Oklahoma State University (OSU) in United States, and supported by the International Research & Exchanges Board organization for creating Virtual Learning Environments (Cyberlearning Environment) for enhancing students learning experience and pedagogical by using Remote Experimentation Labs. In general, the project aimed to include several modules for students from those universities that can be running via the Internet, and helping to increase the collaborative work among researchers in Kurdistan region and Iraq.