Comparing Attendance and Virtual Students from Research- Technological Skills Perspective

Abstract

Introduction: The main aim of this study was to compare face-to-face and virtual students with respect to having research-technological skill perspectives.Materials & Methods: In this descriptive survey all face-to-face and virtual students of Tehran University were selected using the random categorization method based on Kerjesi & Morgan's table. From 2250 attending students and from 445 virtual students, 327 and 205 students were selected, respectively. For data collection, a researcher-made questionnaire was used. This questionnaire was designed based on five basic elements such as search resource skills, skills for developing and presenting content, attending online environments and publishing ideas, communicative and conversation skills and using applied software. The validity of this tool was confirmed by five experts and its reliability was 0.90. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for data analysis.Results: The findings showed that the skills of attending and virtual students were "relatively desirable" in searching for resources, using applied software, online publishing and developing and presenting content and no difference was found between the two groups. However, the two groups differed with respect to commutative and conversation skills.Conclusion: No main differences were observed between attending and virtual students of Tehran University in research-technological.