Comparison of the effectiveness of two academic advisor's educational methods on the level of student's satisfaction in Hamadan University of Medical Sciences

Students need academic advising during their study in a university to be capable, successful and to prevent academic problems. Based on the previous studies, students were dissatisfied from their academic advisors. This study was performed to compare two educational methods for the academic advisors. Seventy-two academic advisors participated in a pre-test and 87 participated in the education. The latter group was randomly divided into two groups. Group 1(n=43), attended in one day education. Group 2 (n=44), only received the educational materials as the method two education program. To evaluate students’ satisfaction from their academic advisors, a valid and reliable questionnaire was used in pre-test section (n=445), and in the experimental section (n=961). Students in the experimental group were divided into three groups: group 1, whose academic advisors had been participated in the educational method one, group 2, whose academic advisors had been participated in the educational method two and group 3, those students that had no academic advisors. The results showed that there were significant differences (P<0.05) between students’ satisfaction of pre-test section (mean =25.52, SD=10.82), group 1(mean =29.28, SD=9.13), group 2 (mean =24.65, SD=8.61), and group 3 (mean =16.98, SD=8.04). This study showed that the level of student's satisfaction depended on the academic advisors’ abilities. Also, application of the educational program like workshop could improve academic advisors’ skills resulting in students’ satisfaction. Having educational material could not influence academic advisors’ behavior.