SPECIAL FOCUS PAPER EVALUATION PLAN AND PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF A NETWORK OF REMOTE LABS IN THE MAGHREBIAN COUNTRIES Evaluation Plan and Preliminary Evaluation of a Network of Remote Labs in the Maghrebian Countries http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijoe.v10i5.3853 T. Tsiatsos 1 , S. Douka 1 , A. Mavridis 1 , S. Tegos 1 , A. Naddami 2 , T. Zimmer 3 , D. Geoffroy 3 1 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece 2 University HASSAN I Settat, Morocco 3 University Bordeaux, Talence, France Abstract—The need for adopting virtual and remote labs in engineering education is high in Algeria, Morocco and Tuni- sia. This paper proposes the evaluation plan of a network of remote labs in the Maghrebian countries. This plan is based on the significant research that has been done until now concerning the evaluation of remote labs. More specifically the proposed evaluation strategy of the project will focus on five different but interrelated directions (a) usability of remote labs; (b) learners’ attitude towards remote labs; (c) technical evaluation of remote labs operation; (d) evaluation of the e-learning content namely the teaching units previous- ly described; and (e) learning outcome. Furthermore, this paper presents preliminary evaluation results based on this evaluation plan and resulted from a pilot case study. Index Terms—Remote labs, Network of remote labs, Engi- neering education, Evaluation. I. INTRODUCTION This paper proposes the evaluation plan of a network of remote labs in the Maghrebian countries Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. This work is carried out within the frame- work of the European Tempus project called “eSience”. The consortium of this project involves many partners from different countries of different cultures and educa- tional systems. More specifically, the consortium of the project consists of sixteen different partners from seven different countries (France, Austria, Greece, Romania, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria). The main challenge of this paper is a. (a) to review the state of the countries where the eSience project is implementing the network of remote labs art solution; b. (b) to set off the characteristics of such a network that should be evaluated and measured, in order to prove that this network is successful or not; c. (c) to present a suitable evaluation plan of such a distributed network of remote labs in the Maghre- bian countries. This paper is structured as follows: in the next section it describes the overall and specific objectives of the eSience project; afterwards, it presents the related work in the area of evaluation of remote labs. Next, it presents the situation in the Maghrebian countries that are participating in the project (i.e. Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), in order to present the difficulties of the application of the evaluation plan. Afterwards, it presents the evaluation strategy along with the instruments that will be used in order to support this evaluation plan. The next two sections present the case study along with the results. II. ESCIENCE PROJECT DESCRIPTION eSience Tempus project "Maghreb Network of remote labs (2012-2015)" launched in January 2013. The objec- tive of the project is to create an efficient remote labs network in the Maghreb region for the modernization of higher education in technological sciences. Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria are involved in this TEMPUS project to create a network of remote labs whose goal is efficien- cy and the sharing of high performance instrumentation. In addition, the development of teaching units related to distance will train a larger number of technicians and engineers. This approach enables the implementation of a training system at the international level and the creation of a new generation of versatile graduates able to adapt to a chang- ing global context. This is fully inline with the develop- ment strategy of university education in the Maghreb. Among the specific goals of the project are the following: (a) Adaptation of content to the development in science and technology, taking into account the expectations of the professional word; (b) Creation of 3 remote laboratory platforms in the Maghreb and their networking; (c) Im- plementation of practical courses for on-distance educa- tion; (d) Creating teaching units in the e-learning format; (e) Setting up and using an LMS (Learning Management System); (f) Evaluation of the newly created educational resources; (g) Use of the pedagogical resources. A main objective concerning the development is the in- terconnection of a well-known Learning Management System (LMS) (e.g. moodle) to specific remote lab archi- tectures. Examples of such type of architecture are the following: iLab (http://www.ilab-europe.net/) and Lab2go (http://www.lab2go.net/fr/). More information about the technical solution of eScience project is available at [9]. General information about eSience Tempus project is available at http://www.esience.org/. III. RELATED WORK There are several studies about the impact of remote la- boratories in the learning outcomes. Gomes and Bogosyan iJOE ‒ Volume 10, Issue 5, 2014 15