Accreditation of Factors, Criteria and Indicators for External Evaluation of Education Departments in Public Universities of Tehran

Today, most countries have a lot of emphasis on quality assurance mechanisms in higher education. One of these mechanisms is external evaluation. Despite the emphasis of upstream documents on the need to provide a framework for the establishment of a quality assurance system and, consequently, the implementation of external evaluation in higher education, so far little has been done to carry out external evaluation in the country. Therefore, in the current study, it has been attempted to validate and weigh the "factors, criteria and indicators" for external evaluation in education departments in public universities in Tehran according to experts' opinion.

Materials: 

To this end, a quantitative approach, descriptive-survey method and questionnaire were used. The results of the questionnaire were analyzed by Cronbach's alpha and combined reliability through the use of PLS statistical software. The content and face validity of the questionnaire were also evaluated according to the opinion of the supervisors and consultants and the initial interviewers. Structural validity was calculated and confirmed by factor analysis using PLS software. Also, reliability was calculated and confirmed by the Cronbach's alpha test and the composite reliability index.

The findings indicated that except for the criterion "1.6. department regulations and approvals" and indicators like "1.2.5. faculty members' satisfaction with department manager", and "1.2.6. student satisfaction with department manager", and "3.1.3. proportionality of number of admissions with the capacity of department training courses" the other criteria and indicators presented (27 out of 28 criteria and 74 out of 77 indicators) for evaluating the external factors of education departments in public universities of Tehran were valid and reliable, and consequently, they had the optimum level of completeness and adequacy. Also, the importance and weight of each indicator and criterion were determined based on factor load, which could be used to prioritize them in evaluating each factor. It is worth noting that at the end of the questionnaire, a section was designed for participants to provide their suggestions to be added to the list of the aforementioned factors, criteria and indicators. At the end, their suggestions were presented. In their view, except for the factors "4. courses and curriculum implemented" and "5. teaching-learning process", we can add some items to the other factors –i.e. "1.objectives, organizational position, management and organization", "2. faculty", "3. students", and "6. graduates"- in order to increase the adequacy and consistency of external evaluation criteria and indicators.