A Study on the Pedagogical Aspects of Virtual Universities in Tehran

In virtual educational systems, selecting an appropriate and effective approach to the quality of experience in virtual learning requires knowledge and adoption of pedagogical aspects. To this end, this study aims to investigate the pedagogical aspects of virtual universities in Tehran. The research method is quantitative and of survey nature. The statistical population consists of all faculty members at virtual universities in Tehran who were serving in the academic year 2014-2015 out of whom 240 individuals were selected using the cluster sampling method as the research sample. The data collection instrument is a researcher-developed questionnaire which was developed by the researchers in 39 closed-end items on the basis of Likert 5-point scale, varying from “completely agree” to “completely disagree” once they extracted pedagogical aspects of virtual universities. For the purpose of determining validity of the instrument, specialists and experts’ views on this subject were used, and in order to ensure reliability of the questionnaire, the researchers employed Cronbach’s alpha coefficient the following flexibility aspects = 0.54, tools for establishing communications = 0.62, teaching-learning approaches = 0.69, plan and resource management = 0.85, appraisal approaches =0.72, collegiate symbols = 0.76, and academic culture = 0.63, with the total put at 0.79. For the purpose of data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics were applied. In the former, mean, SD, and frequency were used; in the latter, single-sample t-test was adopted for answering the research questions. Finally, SPSS22 program was employed for data description and analysis. The research findings suggest that means of collegiate symbol and academic culture are lower than the mediocre degree, implying that the level of the both components is lower than the mediocre point. The rest of the components with their level of significance higher than 0.05 are not significantly different than the mediocre level, implying that their status is mediocre. It can therefore be concluded that the current status of pedagogical aspects of virtual universities is far from ideal.