About
Oct. 24, 2018, 5:07 p.m.
Building a Remote Experimentation Network for serving higher education teachers and students in Iraq (REXNet)

Introduction
REXNet Project is a collaborative work among three universities (i.e. Duhok University (UoD, Zakho University (UoZ), Duhok Polytechnic University (DPU) in Kurdistan Region-Iraq and Oklahoma State University (OSU) in United States, which is supported by International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) organization. REXNet project includes six modules that can be viewed as Virtual Lab Environment for students of Duhok universities. The students can access to these lab modules through the web browser and connect via the Internet remotely. The virtual lab environment is composed of various learning modules. The term “module” refers to a learning unit, which has specific learning objectives, as illustrated in figure 1.

Project Idea
In general, REXNet project aims to use Virtual Lab Environment for serving students and teachers of computer science and Physics departments from those three universities. It is composed of several learning modules of robotics (i.e. Revolute Arm, Gantry, Automated Gantry, Auto W/point Picking, Factory, and A*), as illustrated in figures.

Objectives

1- Allowing students to access the virtual labs remotely
2- Creating a Local Community of Practices (CoP) around instructional technologies in the Kurdistan Region.
3- Increasing the collaborative and cooperative work among researchers.

Conclusion

The primary goal of REXNet Project is to identify action initiatives that makeup education system for The twenty-first century. In general, REXNet Project calls for increasing the number of tenure-track staff who are interesting to use several technologies in their circular and increasing the collaborative work around technologies among them.
In summary, our learners would be educated if more students took part in using instructional technology such as online labs. Overall, we should continue to provide the students with other technologies, for example, Virtual Reality (VR), for enhancing their skills and developing a higher education system in the Kurdistan Region.