Investigating of barriers to the development of virtual education in Urmia University of Medical Sciences from the viewpoint of faculty members

In the era of technological promotion, considering technological approaches in education is a necessity, not a choice. The importance of paying attention to such approaches in universities of medical sciences is more obvious, because new information replaces previous ones constantly and if universities wish to transfer this information in the shortest time, there is a need for modern teaching methods, as traditional methods do not account for the transmission of such large volume of information. The purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers of developing virtual education in Urmia University of Medical Sciences from the viewpoint of faculty members.

The statistical population of this research consisted of all the faculty members of Urmia University of Medical Sciences in 2017, from which 137 subjects were selected randomly. The data collection tool was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability by Cronbachchr('39')s alpha (89%). The Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 19.

The results showed that the cumulative percentage of variance for the eight factors was 62/575 percent, which prevented technical support with 9/720 percent of the major share of the variance percentage, and cultural barrier with 3/315 percent of the lowest share of the percentage of variance Allocated.

According to faculty members, technical support was considered the most important barrier so with the increasing speed of the Internet, new systems must be replaced for disabled ones and through strengthening technological infrastructures, hindering factors for application of virtual learning is reduced.