Determining The Quality Factors of The Web Portal of an Agriculture Educational Institute in Iran

Abstract

Most of the agriculture educational institutions in Iran are in public sector. ITVHE was the first institute in Iran, which took the responsibility for commencing technical and vocational higher education in agriculture sector. Until recently due to the subsidies paid by the government for higher education, student recruitment was not a major problem for the universities. After the initiation of privatization plan by the government, based on 44th article of the constitution, a competitive environment has been emerged. Thus, having a quality web portal became necessary for some reasons like decreasing the expenditure, recruiting more students, better services to students and a good reputation in the society. In the present ITVHE have 25 active sub-portals among its branches which are scattered all over Iran. For the sake of evaluating the quality of the web portal a research project has been proposed for determining the factors which are effective on the quality of the so called web portal. The researchers used a qualitative approach in their methodology. For the purpose of designing an analytical model many quality frameworks and models have been studied thoroughly. At last and based on the tri-lateral aspects of the institute, i.e. being educational, public sector and Iranian, four models and frameworks selected. Based on the initial study a set of quality factors were selected. Some focus groups according to the population of the research, which is consisted of students, lecturers and managers, were developed. The quality factors, then, examined in the focus groups and at last the final set of quality factors has been determined. Time: Jul 19, 15:02 GMT