Analyzing the Employability of Educational Technology Graduates and Detecting the Effecting Factors

The development of societies, especially developing countries, largely depends on the expansion of academic institutions. Also, one of the most important features of educational institutions is the intertwining of education and employment structures. Any education should have economic efficiency, the highest type of which is to create employment appropriate to the student. Based on this, the present study has dealt with the issue of the status of students and graduates of master's and doctoral degrees in the field of educational technology to the labor market and the factors affecting it from the perspective of experts.

In the present study, a survey method is used and consists of two stages. Initially, a semi-structured interview was conducted to identify the effective factors in guiding educational technology graduates to the labor market; In the second stage, a questionnaire was developed based on the identified factors and was used to survey students and graduates of master's and doctoral degrees in this field. The statistical sample in the first stage was 24 professors and specialists in the field of educational technology who were selected by a homogeneous purposeful method. They completed the availability of the questionnaire. The validity of the factors identified in the interview before distribution in the statistical community was sent to 3 professors of educational technology and their comments and suggestions were applied, then the final questionnaire was developed; The validity of the questionnaire was done by the method of a specialized judgment of experts in the field of educational technology. Reliability was calculated based on Cronbach's alpha equal to 0.74. Data analysis was performed in SPSS software version 22. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics of frequency, mean and standard deviation were used, and to determine the differences between each of the groups of factors affecting employment, a one-sample t-test and Friedman test were used.

In the first phase of the study, according to experts, 22 factors affecting graduates' employment were identified. These factors are in four areas: 1. Factors related to the field, 2. Factors related to students and graduates, 3. Factors related to professors, and 4. Factors related to society and country officials. According to the results of the second phase of the research, all the factors identified by experts in the field of educational technology are effective in attracting graduates to the labor market. However, the factors of knowledge of educational technology professors, the existence of experienced professors in educational technology and the compilation of university courses based on the needs of the labor market are the highest average and factors of high student expectations of field, the activity of scientific associations and sufficient knowledge of the social status and positions related to the field of study had the lowest average.