Effective Factors in Distance Education in PayameNour University: A Pilot Study

In today's volatile business environment, each organization needs welleducated employees. Therefore, universities and educating institutions in the society play important roles in training people. In this knowledge era, countries that are going with the pace of development have to care about their education system. The effectiveness of an education system is a key indicator of development. With regard to the enhancement of IT, new education systems such as distance learning have been emerged. In recent years, these systems have been developed rapidly in Iran. Now, more than one hundred thousand students are using the distance learning system. In this research, the effectiveness of this system was considered. Four factors have been evaluated in order to measure the effectiveness of PayameNour University distance education system i.e. inputs, procedure, outputs, outcomes, and environment, which are components of this system. Four hypotheses were applied to this research:
1) The effectiveness of distance education in PayamNour University is related to students' personal factors.
2) The effectiveness of distance education in PayameNour University is related to context and educational facilities.
3) The effectiveness of distance education in PayameNour University is related to outputs (final and intermediary) and outcomes of education system.
4) The effectiveness of distance education in PayameNour University is related to environmental factors.