Investigation of Factors Affecting E-learning Development According to Student's Viewpoint of Golestan University of Medical Sciences

Today's competitive environment and the development of science and technology has made the use of e-learning inevitable in human society. In the last decade, according to some challenges such as Increased demand for higher education, Inadequacy of funds, Inadequacy of full-time faculty and lack of geographical limitations put e-learning and teaching up in center of full consideration. Currently, the traditional methods of training are not able to respond to the educational needs of lifelong learners. Hence, this study was conducted with the aim of investigating factors affecting the development of e-learning from the perspective of students.. With regard to the number of faculties at Golestan University of Medical Sciences in the year 1392, a total amount of 170 students were selected by stratified random sampling method., Data gathering tool was a questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first part was demographic information and the second part was Standardized questionnaire from Enayati et al. After coding and entering data into Spss16, descriptive and inferential statistics such as the mean and the associated t-test and ANOVA were used. Results obtained from the students’ viewpoints suggested that factors examined in the study influenced the development of e-learning, and based on their order of priority included respectively: infrastructure hardware and software, Social Communications and Collaboration Technologies, content of teaching and provisions of learning, method of assessing learners, Educational fields, and finally the attraction of students. In addition, examining the role of effective factors in the study divided bygender, education, and Faculty had no significant relevance (p value>./05). According to the results of the data analysis, therefore, it may indicate that all the factors examined at the University had an impact on e-learning. Moreover, hardware and software among these factors in frastructure were the most important ones in the field of e-learning.