Identifying the Effective Components on Professional Competencies of Faculty Members in the Distance Learning Platform

This study aims to identify the effective components on professional competencies of faculty members in a distance education platform.Today universities compete in multi-dimensional markets (national and international student, research, enterprise) they are required to maintain solvency and comply with benchmarks and legal frameworks, to produce high quality research work, keep student consumers happy, produce good graduates—the list of imperatives grows. Since the role of higher education is decisive in economic, social, technological and cultural development of the country and the specialized manpower required by different sectors are trained by higher education. Therefore, the strengthening and development of higher education is the basis for the development of other sectors. Among these, one of the main and important factors of the country education system are faculty members. So, their ability and competencies have a direct impact on the performance of higher education.  New missions in the university system and understanding the multi-semantic concept of the university have always been the necessity of paying attention to the subject of faculty members by policy makers and higher education managers. Therefore, the reaction of universities to the issue of faculty members' competencies as one of the main assets of the university has always become an attractive and significant subject in academic circles, so that over time universities and higher education institutions have found that they need programs that essentially help them in managing, developing and improving this capital. This attention comes at a time when confrontation with the developing global economy, global communication through new technologies and systems, the growth of higher education costs, the emergence of new knowledge and research capabilities, the rise of global education and literacy, and the emergence of trans-competitiveness in the fields of higher education have made it inevitable to increase organizational efficiency for universities and higher education centers.Experts believe that faculty members' quality and competence level is one of the important factors in students' success. Therefore, lack of necessary skills and competencies by professors can affect the faculty members and students' performance. Given the importance of the subject over the past decade, the study of faculty members' competencies, especially at the graduate level, has been considered by many researchers in the field of education, teaching and professional development. The importance of this issue is that the students' fate depends on their professors and their level of competence in various fields. Competencies refer to a person's knowledge, skills, abilities, or personality traits that directly affect his or her job performance. The concept of competency has a long history in the field of management and is more applicable to leaders and managers. Competency is a combination of explicit and implicit knowledge, behavior, and skills that give individuals the potential and capacity to perform tasks effectively.The current situation of the country's universities, which with the increasing demand for higher education and increasing degree of degree, along with the increasing tendency of the private and semi-private sector to establish universities and higher education institutions, often of poor quality, can have a negative impact on university faculty performance. Criticisms such as the reduction of quality, the incompatibility of university output with the needs of the labor market, business and the sacrifice of education and research, have targeted these organizations with severe criticism that the lack of attention to it at the micro level, A number of undocumented and unqualified citizens want to occupy top positions at the macro level and will slow down the process of moving towards sustainable development. What are the qualifications of faculty members to affect the development of the distance education system and how vital and sensitive the contribution of each factor is an issue that will be studied in the present study. Currently, one of the most important challenges facing Iran's higher education is the little and brief development of faculty members of universities.The present study seeks to identify the components affecting the professional competencies of faculty members in the context of distance education in order to consider them in policy making and planning to improve the quality of human resource development.

The research design is descriptive survey. The qualitative section was used to deduce the model. In the quantitative stage, the Delphi method based on experts’ judgement was used to indexing the model. The statistical population (N=190) in this research was the faculty members of Payam Noor University of Khorasan Razavi who were selected and navigated based on Krejcie and Morgan (1970) Table of determining sample size (N=120). The data collection instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire that was edited and modified in several stages. The validity of the questionnaire was measured through construct validity and its reliability was calculated through Chorenbach α (94%) Obtained. Based on literature and research history, the components were identified. The identified and effective components on professional competencies of faculty members including knowledge, skills, behavior, attitudes and sub-factors are relevant to each factor.In this paper, recent articles, theses and sources were studied and 120 items related to the professional competencies of faculty members, were extracted and given to the experts in the first stage. Out of this number, 20 items with standard deviations above one and below average were removed based on analysis.In the second stage, the items were examined for re-examination in the form of a questionnaire by 15 experts. In the second stage, 93 items, out of 110, were finally approved.
The professional competency questionnaire of the faculty members has construct validity based on the experts’ view and the reliability of the questionnaire was determined to be 0.943.

To find the effective fundamental variables which affect e-learning, the Delphi method was used. The effectiveness of knowledge factor (0.314), skill factor (0.219), behavior factor (0.125) and attitude factor (0.255) were obtained. In this study, knowledge factor with specific value (6.66) and explained variance (12.40) had the highest share among factors affecting faculty members' competencies. Cultural knowledge with factor load (0.80), computer literacy with factor load (0.78), information literacy with factor load (0.75) and job knowledge with factor load (0.70) are the most effective variables of knowledge factor, respectively. According to the obtained results, it can be stated that the highest value is related to knowledge dimension and the lowest value is related to behavior dimension.

The value of human resources capital in the development and use of main competencies and capabilities cannot be underestimated. For maintaining and following developments in human resources’ tasks and functions, experts in human resource must acquire and develop a new set of competencies to complete their changing roles and responsibilities. Developing learning culture, improving communication channels, developing team skills and creating an organizational climate combined with meaningful feeling, competence, independence, trust and participation can play an important role in promoting faculty members' performance.