October 2009 – UNESCO has launched the Avicenna Virtual Campus in Iraq, in partnership with the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. The project builds on ongoing endeavours by UNESCO and its partners to strengthen the quality of education at all levels by promoting partnerships between Iraqi universities and universities abroad. The Avicenna Virtual Campus will help Iraq to expand access to education and improve the quality of teacher training.

Initially, the project will establish three Avicenna centres in the universities of Baghdad, Basra and Salahaddin to link these institutions with those belonging to the Avicenna Virtual Campus in the Mediterranean region.

The three Avicenna centres in Iraq will be able to use the modules developed by the Avicenna network over the past five years. Ultimately, each university will produce modules of its own which will then be pooled among institutions participating in both the Avicenna Campus and the newly established African Virtual Campus.

A training workshop in online course development is being run on 8-10 November 2009 in Amman (Jordan) for 18 teachers from the Universities of Baghdad, Basra and Salahaddin and two representatives of the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. Thirteen experts will run the course: four from UNESCO headquarters and UNESCO’s office in Baghdad; five from the Avicenna Knowledge Centre at Philadelphia University and a further four from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain) and the Ministry of Education and Scientific Research in Algeria (Read the programme).