The Education Department is a core unit within the faculty, responsible for planning, organizing, and overseeing educational activities. It works closely with academic staff to design and update course curricula, coordinate class schedules, and enhance the overall quality of teaching. The department aims to provide a supportive environment for effective learning and the academic development of students. It also plays a key role in academic advising, addressing educational concerns, and organizing consultation sessions. By applying modern teaching methods and responding to current educational needs, the Education Department strives to improve the learning process and contribute to student success.
The main purpose of this study is to investigate, from a theoretical point of view, virtual universities in comparison with Social Networking Services (SNS). The theoretical framework constitutes of the Human Motivation Theory (HMT) and the Human Factors (HF) in which Facebook as the most popular SNS is compared with virtual university in general. The main features of these technologies were compared in order to consider whether they comply with mentioned theories. Using an exploratory research methodology, this study concludes that SNSs are more adopted with HMT than virtual university. In the other word, Facebook applications as the most popular virtual community with over 500,000,000 users worldwide, is more compliant with HMT to gratify users' needs. Also, from the perspective of human factors, it is more successful than the virtual university.
International Education Studies (discontinued) (19139020)5(1)pp. 50-56
This study has examined the characteristics of physics teachers, their professional competences, supplies of equipments and technologies, appropriate textbooks and motivational factors in students' learning of physics from female physics teacher's points of view. The population included all female physics teachers in Isfahan city and a total of 88 teachers were selected as sample of study. The study was a descriptive survey that used researcher made questionnaire consists of 46 items. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for this scale was set to be .95. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, t-tests and ANOVA test were used. The results showed that in the present state, physics teachers have a low level of scientific knowledge. In terms of professional skills, their abilities were average and educational equipments and technologies were available at low level. Moreover the satisfaction of female physics teachers of books and educational texts was moderate. Meanwhile, the motivation for learning the lessons of physics was moderate. Also the results in desired state showed that all components of study could be effective in learning physics. Accordingly, it is recommended to enhance learning and teaching physics education, school should be equipped to supplies and technologies for teaching physics, including virtual laboratory.
International Education Studies (discontinued) (19139020)5(2)pp. 175-184
The purpose of this study was to provide an exploratory investigation of faculty member's efficacy inventory in higher education. Review of the literature showed a few studies about this subject and current instruments did not consider the theoritical foundations of faculty member efficacy. Moreover, most researches were limited to schools area and K-12. After an extensive review of the literature, first, a set of items to operationalize faculty perceptions and beliefs of efficacy in their tasks was developed. At second stage, higher education colleagues who were working in our university and other nearby universities examined the items for critique, and consulted with their colleagues about content and face validity. Third, a pilot study was initiated to map the domain of the construct and refined the measure and the meaning of faculty efficacy through the statistical methods. The instrument was field-tested and refined using a representative sample of universities faculty. Fourth, a factor analysis was utilized to identify factors related to efficacy scale of faculty members. Fifth, we reduced items and agreed about 18. Four factors were appeared in the factor analysis consisting of teaching competencies, research competencies, social competencies, and personal competencies. We insured all four sources of efficacy (mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and emotional arousal) were represented in each efficacy components (teaching competencies, research competencies, social competencies and personal competencies). Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated for each factor and in overall the instrument was a reliable scale 0.83. Finally, differences between faculty members were studied based on some demographic variables such as gender and academic ranking. Results showed that there were not significant differences between all female and male faculty members efficacy and so based on academic ranking.
