Designing a Model for Evaluating Iranian University Websites: Using Fuzzy VIKOR Approach

Academic websites are one of the most important criteria to measure university websites worldwide. In this paper a model based on multi-criteria decision-making for measuring university website’s evaluation indicators is introduced. The proposed model has six main dimensions including “usability”, “content”, “functionality”, “student services”, “efficiency” and “reliability” along with fourteen indicators including “understandability”, “coverage”, “accuracy”, “clarity”, “university identity”, “educational information”, “navigability”, “student-centeredness”, “control”, “student web-based support”, “maintenance”, “accessibility”, “speed” and “link error”. In the next step, due to the inherent ambiguity in these concepts of indicators, a combination of fuzzy set method with the VIKOR ranking method has been used to weigh and rank indicators and metrics. In VIKOR method, an attempt is made to select the closest answer to the ideal option. Finally, a detailed evaluation model has been developed to measure academic websites’ quality. Then, by applying the proposed model on the website of top ten universities in Iran, the results are reviewed. According to these results, the “accuracy” index is the most important, and the “link error” indicator is the least important among all indicators. These results also show that there is no significant correlation between “fuzzy-VIKOR” method, “webometrics” method, and “web assessment index” method. The results of this study help university website designers become aware of weaknesses of web designs and use it to strengthen academic websites.