Investigating the role of virtual tests in reducing stress from the perspective of faculty members and students of Payame Noor University

• Main Author: Sh. Ranjdoust
• Format: Article
• Language: fas
• Published: Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University (SRTTU) 2019-03-01
• Series: Fanāvarī-i āmūzish
• Subjects: keywords: virtual tests; stress; excitement; physical reactions
• Online Access: https://jte.sru.ac.ir/article_868_fe169fb7a58cf8c57d66c4820d7f25bb.pdf

Background and Objective:Test anxiety is one of the state stresses that is closely related to the performance and academic achievement of millions of students in educational centers. People with high test stress, unlike those with low test stress who often pay attention to homework-related variables, pay attention to self-related variables. In other words, people with test stress are anxious during the exam. People with anxiety and high test anxiety are more alert and unhappy than those with low test anxiety and stress. When these people are in a position of evaluation, they show negative and self-centered responses that make the passage of time seem slower and causes disruption in the process of doing the task. Test stress consists of three important components: anxiety, excitement, and physical response. The negative effects of test stress on academic achievement have been confirmed in many studies. The main reason for the decline in performance is that people with test stress cannot pay attention to the tasks related to homework and irrelevant thoughts come to their minds that hinder their progress. Many factors can reduce test anxiety among Payame Noor students. One of the most important factors is the role of virtual tests. Virtual or e-learning is a new way of learning remotely, based on the Internet-intranet network. In this teaching method, the required resources are provided to the students through the Internet network, and the students can use the educational resources to learn at any time and in any place. In this way, tools such as interactive templates, simulation, online classroom, exercises, virtual tests, videos, and images and audios developed based on educational standards allow the audience to be taught. The goal of this study was to evaluate the relationship between virtual tests and stress reduction from the viewpoints of university instructors and students in Payam-e Noor University in academic year 2016-2017. Methods: This study is applied based on its goal; it is descriptive-survey based on its nature; and it is a field study based on its research method. The research population included instructors and students of Marand Payam-e Noor University (n=1896, 1740 students and 156 instructors). The sampling method is relational-stratified in both groups. The data collection instrument included two questionnaires. The first one was a standard questionnaire of virtual education and the second one is a researcher-made questionnaire. The validity of this questionnaire is approved based on experts’ opinions. In examining the reliability of this test, the level of internal consistency was estimated using Cronbach's alpha method. The Cronbach's alpha for the standard questionnaire of virtual education was 0.91 and the researcher-made questionnaire was 0.87, respectively. For analyzing the data, the graph, percentage and frequency have been used at descriptive statistics level; and the Pearson correlation test has been used for inferential statistics. Findings: The following results have been obtained: virtual tests are associated with reduced stress; conducting virtual tests is associated with reduced emotion; and conducting virtual tests is associated with reduced physical response. Conclusion: The results showed that virtual tests play a significant role in reducing anxiety, excitability and physical reactions. Therefore, to reduce stress in students and create the necessary conditions to reduce stress, it is recommended to develop the infrastructures of virtual test in universities.   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  =====================================================================================