Effects of faculty members positive character and its indices on educational motivation of students at the University of Isfahan

Reaching high levels of success in institutions of higher education is deeply dependent on the character and behavior of their professors and instructors for they are the ones who have the power of expanding horizons of higher education actively. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the effects of professors' character on the educational motivation of students at the University of Isfahan. This applied research is a descriptive- correlative study. The statistical population of the study included 13281 students at the University of Isfahan that 373 them whom were selected as the sample through random sampling. The data were collected through a standard researcher-made questionnaire whose content reliability was approved after experts' review. The validity of the questionnaire was estimated using Cronbach Alpha method at 0.91. The data was analyzed through SPSS 20 computer application. The results revealed that the effect of character on educational motivation of students as the primary hypothesis of the study was significant. Yet, as its secondary hypotheses, the study failed to find a significant relationship between indices of character including wisdom, modesty and passion independently on educational motivation. However, the effect of other indices like honesty, courage, humor and compassion on educational motivation of the students was significant. Thus, it could be concluded that the higher the professors' characteristic indices of honesty, courage, humor and compassion, the more educationally motivated their students will be.