Evaluation of E-learning during COVID-19 Pandemic: State in Iran

More than three and a half million Iranian college students were required to take their courses via elearning during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Given that this e-learning experience has been administered on this scale for the first time, it certainly involves some shortcomings. For instance, there was no performance report available on the status of e-learning from the perspective of the final users (i.e. students). Accordingly, the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the state of e-learning in Iran during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. The present study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptivesurvey concerning the data collection method. The demographic population of this study comprises all students attending electronic courses during the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year. Due to the prevailing circumstances in Iran, almost all college students have been studying electronically and enrolled in online classes. Therefore, 400 college students were randomly selected (disregarding the demographic characteristics such as the type of university, gender, and degree). The tool employed in this study is a researcher-devised questionnaire This devised questionnaire contains 29 items and evaluates six aspects. The content validity of the questionnaire has been confirmed by several university professors. The devised questionnaire was presented to 25 members of the community and further examined to confirm the reliability of the research means after obtaining and confirming the validity. Finally, the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha method of 0.916. The results of conducting the T-test at a 95% confidence level revealed that the poor status of elearning in terms of system quality. Meanwhile, the satisfaction level of the students in terms of information and content quality, facilitating factors, user compliance, lecturer-student interaction, and elearning success were found to be moderate.