Formative evaluation of university virtual classes during the corona epidemic with importance-performance analysis

Although virtual classrooms were used very quickly in the country's universities during the Corona epidemic, the quality and effectiveness of these classes is a fundamental issue for the higher education system. In this regard, the current research deals with the formative evaluation of virtual classes of universities during the Corona epidemic. In terms of the purpose of this research, it is an applied-developmental research, in terms of the method of data collection, it is considered a survey-type descriptive research, and finally, from the point of view of the method of analysis, it is a mixed research. A semi-structured interview and a researcher-made questionnaire were used to collect data. The community of participants of the qualitative part includes the academic staff members of the educational management of the free and public universities of Tehran. Sampling was done with a purposeful method and theoretical saturation was achieved with 20 interviews. In the quantitative part, the viewpoint of 384 graduate students of Tehran public and free universities was used. Thematic analysis method was used to analyze the data of the qualitative part and the dimensions and components of the formative evaluation of the virtual classes of the universities were identified. Then, using gap analysis and importance-performance analysis, the status of virtual classrooms was evaluated. Based on the results of qualitative analysis, 3 overarching themes, 9 organizing themes and 43 basic themes were identified. The findings show that improving the efficiency of the educational system and developing virtual education are in the acceptable area.