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.