Developing a conceptual model for establishing virtual laboratories

Considering the importance of technical laboratories with the purpose of research and/or training in universities and industries, virtual and remote laboratories have become an important issue for today's technological world. Despite of development of various virtual laboratories in some universities around the world, there is no rigorous model structure and/or specification checklist or standards for establishing or evaluating such laboratories. This paper presents a conceptual model and some appropriate checklist to be used for establishing and/or evaluation of virtual and remote laboratories. The checklist has been set up based on a comparison of 20 virtual laboratories around the world and also more than 10 years experiences of the authors in developing e-learning programs and virtual laboratories. The findings and recommendations of this paper could also be considered as some initial step toward standardization of virtual laboratories.