Identifying Challenges to Development of Distance Education from the Perspective of Payame Noor University Professors

The purpose of the research is to identify the challenges of distance education development from the perspective of professors of Payame Noor University. The research method is qualitative in terms of purpose and in terms of data collection. In this research, after purposeful sampling and reviewing documents and research, the process of interviewing key and informed experts continued until the full identification, description, and characterization of the dimensions, components and indices and theoretical saturation were achieved. In order to determine the logical framework of the collected data, the steps of identifying, taking notes and classifying the concepts were performed. To this end, the collected information and texts were reviewed and categorized into major categories. Finally, the categories were reviewed and the duplicates removed, similar and smaller mergers and dimensions of the specific topic were categorized within the obtained components and indices. Based on the results, two-dimensional extraction model, 7 components, and 45 indices were extracted for university e-learning challenges. After finalizing the data analysis and extracting the conceptual model, the validity of the model was evaluated with 10 experts and university experts in a focus group on dimensions, components and indicators of agreement.