Challenges of Virtual Education: A Report of What Are Not Learned

Abstract

Introduction: In recent years, most of the universities offer new educational methods, like virtual education. This study aimed to identify the challenges of virtual education in Iran’s universities.Materials and Methods: Adopting a phenomenological approach, purposeful sampling, and semi-structured interview, the researcher investigated the perceptions of eight instructors from three virtual universities on virtual education. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The data were coded and analyzed. The accreditation of the data was based on their reliability, acceptability and validity.Results: The findings showed that the main challenges involve three main dimensions: moral education, creativity and power relations. Due to lack of face-to-face interaction, students could not observe and adopt the faculty’s moral behavior. In addition, creativity was not being developed since instructions were merely based on memorization. Virtual education has made student-teacher and student-student relations more democratic, but relations between teachers and also between users and university are still at a low level.Conclusion: The study suggests the necessity of social interaction among virtual students and teachers. Adopting visual technologies, problem solving-based approaches to learning, innovative ideas and immediate feedback by the teacher may force virtual learning environment to be more interactive and creative.