An Analysis of the Preventive and Promoter Factors of Applying Blended Learning System in Agricultural Higher Education from the Perception of Faculty Members of Khozestan Province's Faculties of Agriculture and Natural Resources'

Hashemi Nezahd, Azar; Hosseini, Seyed Mahmood; Hejazi, Yousef

doi:10.22059/ijaedr.2012.30498

An Analysis of the Preventive and Promoter Factors of Applying Blended Learning System in Agricultural Higher Education from the Perception of Faculty Members of Khozestan Province's Faculties of Agriculture and Natural Resources'

Authors

10.22059/ijaedr.2012.30498

Abstract

The present study was performed to analyze some of the preventive vs. promoter factors of applying blended learning system in agricultural higher education as viewed from the perspective of Khuzestan Province's Faculties of Agriculture and Natural Resources' faculty members. Statistical population of the study consisted of the members of Agriculture and Natural Resources State College Faculties of Khuzestan Province(N=159) from among whom 72 were selected as sample population through Cochran Formula and Random Sampling Method. Questionnaire formed the main tool of collecting data. The questionnaire’s validity was confirmed by a panel of faculty members of Tehran University. Its reliability was assessed through Cronbach’s Alpha the figures for which were obtained 0.92 and 0.93 for the respective preventive and promoter factors. The results indicated that from the viewpoint of the faculty members involved in the sudy, the most important preventive factor of applying blended learning in agriculture colleges is a lack of appropriate telecommunication infrastructure, sufficient band width whereas the most important promoter factor being easy and quick access to information sources of internet. The obtained results of factor analysis revealed that five factors of infrastructure, informative, psychological, supportive and proficiency explain 76.773 percent of preventive factors’total variance in applying blended learning and the four factors of: administrative, incentive, informative and supportive explain71.124 percent of promoter factors’ total variance in blended learning.

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