Comparing of the Critical Thinking of Students in Real and Virtual Courses

One of the most important basic skills of the 21 century is critical thinking. The aim of this study is comparing the critical thinking of students in real and virtual courses.
The type of research, in terms of purpose, is applied and in terms of method is descriptive, survey. In this paper, according to the desired criteria, 120 MA students of faculty of psychology and educational sciences, Tehran University in the 2015 - 2016 academic years, in virtual and real courses were selected. A total of 60 virtual course students were selected with the census method and 60 real course students selected with random selection method. Assessment tool used this study is Ricketts (2003) critical thinking questionnaire consisted of 33 question that its validity has been certified by a group of stuff and its reliability in the 3 sub-scales, creativity, development, and commitment were obtained, respectively 0.75, 0.57, and 0.86. In order for data analysis, mean, standard deviation, and percentage were obtained and the Levine test, t-test, and one-way ANOVA test were used.
Considering the results for gender and age, there was no significant difference between present and virtual students (P = 0.078, P = 0.062). Moreover, for present students the mean and the standard deviation was respectively, 3.76 and 0.28 and the same for virtual students was 3.75 and 0.38. Accordingly, there is no significant difference between critical thinking (P = 0.054) and its component (creative, P = 0.071, P > 0.05, growing = 0.061, P > 0.05 and obligation = 0.068, P > 0.05) in virtual and real course student.
Virtual education, if it has high quality, can develop students’ critical thinking as well as present education.