Identifying the factors affecting the presentation of digital university in the corona and post-Covid pandemic period in medical universities

Today, the outbreak of the coronavirus has caused significant changes in the nature and function of higher education, especially in universities, and the digital university is the evolutionary approach of the university and higher education institutions in the face of Corona and post-Corona conditions. The emergence of Covid 19 virus and its epidemic at the beginning of 2020 caused fundamental changes in the higher education programs of the world and Iran. According to the International :union: of Universities, since the global outbreak of the coronavirus, 146 countries have closed their education at all levels (59%) and in some areas education has been limited (30%), 10% of the institutions are facing difficult conditions to operate and only one university in Burundi has continued to operate normally. Accordingly, 67% of the world's universities have used e-learning, 24% did not have adequate infrastructure and the rest have closed their operation. Consequently, today and in the digital age, it is necessary that the maturity of universities and higher education centers be in line with these developments and be able to make the most of the technological potential of the new age to achieve higher education goals. But the digital university has not been examined in the form of a coherent model, and existing research has focused more on the learning aspect and a few components of the digital university. Digital University is an organization that needs to pay attention to its key dimensions in order to be able to use the capacities of the present age and achieve a principled and planned adaptation. This critical situation (conditions of the Corona epidemic and the closure of universities) has raised many concerns, such as the deterioration of the quality of education and concerns about the future of students. Therefore, the need for educational institutions to strengthen more curricula and use teaching innovation techniques and approaches will be of particular importance. Using learning through digital learning makes it possible to learn anytime and anywhere. Creating a digital university and digital learning is an inevitable alternative during the corona disease outbreak. Therefore, in this study, we sought to investigate the impact of digital university on the components of good governance during the corona and post-corona pandemics in the macro medical universities of region one in order to provide a model. The immediate and future benefits of the present study are identifying the dimensions of digital university on the components of good governance of regional medical universities (Mazandaran, Gilan, Golestan, Babol, Semnan and Shahroud universities) and creating relative awareness of the concept and presenting the digital university model which is based on the good governance components of universities. Identifying barriers and facilitators as well as short-term planning in the university, based on research findings to promote the main components of research in medical higher education centers and helping officials and managers of major centers in the higher education organization and the health sector of the country are among the practical consequences of this research for formulating long-term strategies for the promotion of digital universities on the components of good governance in health higher education centers. The question that arises right here is what is the impact of the digital university on the components of good governance during the corona and post-corona pandemics in order to provide a model?

The present study was conducted with a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative). The statistical population in the qualitative section included the professors of macro medical universities in region one summing up to 25 people among who4 people were selected as a statistical sample  considering the saturation law and the quantitative section comprised the principals and deputies of faculties, department heads and professors of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (1851 people) using purposive sampling method 320 of who were selected by stratified random sampling method as a statistical sample based on Cochran's formula.. A researcher-made questionnaire on Digital University was used to collect data.

The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that at 99% confidence level, t-values ​​for the dimensions of the digital university questionnaire were out of range (2.58, 2-58). Also, the R2 values ​​were higher than strong for all dimensions, so there was a strong positive and significant relationship between the variable of digital university with all its dimensions. The highest standard coefficient (0.939) was related to the component of teaching and learning methods from the content dimensions and the lowest value was related to the educational content component with the standard coefficient of (0.881) in the content dimension. Also, according to the R2 values ​​, the component of teaching and learning methods with an R2 value equal to 0.881 was at a higher than strong level. Considering the two main structural and content dimensions, it should be said that the path coefficient of the structural dimension was equal to 0.996 and the content dimension was equal to 0.911, and the R2 values ​​ were equal to 0.939 for the structural dimension, which was higher than strong.

In general, identifying barriers and facilitators of digital university as well as short-term planning in higher education centers were important to develop long-term strategies for the impact of competency on academic authority in higher health centers. Limitations of the research in this study involved limiting the statistical population to the University of Medical Sciences, the geographical scope of the research, and unfortunately, for a number of articles, the full texts of the articles were not available. The difficulty of communicating with some university professors and determining the time required for the interview were among the problems and limitations of the study. According to the results, it is suggested that the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology provide successful management and strategic experiences of national and international universities and institutions of higher education in the country and abroad as a practical example to universities and institutions. University administrators should form futures research teams to anticipate the issues and problems facing the organization in terms of paying attention to the paradigms of digitalization. Developing international science parks and research centers in universities should be conducted to expand the activities of administrators and professors in the direction of moving towards digitalization.