Virtualization of the Classroom and University Culture

Using new media is one of the most important cultural issues in everyday life. The expansion and prevalence of instant and continuous communication has rapidly affected various fields of daily life. The permanent presence of virtual technologies in academic environments can hardly be denied. Meanwhile, the university has also lost its previous nature and meaning. This has especially caused a change in the function of universities in relation to the society and other social entities. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between classroom virtualization and university culture during Covid-19 Situation. The study has a quantitative paradigm and its research method is a survey. The population of the research consists of 385 students of the state universities of Tehran in three categories of face-to face, semi online and online university courses. Cluster Random Sampling and Probabilistic Sampling in proportion to the number of population have been used. The research model was tested using Lisrel software. The results show that the process of virtualization has an influence on the communication as an intermediate variable and it thus has a significant effect on the university culture and its dimensions such as lifestyle, organizational culture, etc. In other words, communication is an intermediary that mediates between virtualization and dimensions of university culture. It can be concluded from the findings that the process of virtualization has created a fundamental change in human interactions and communication and this transformation in human interactions has also spread to other aspects of university life and culture.