EVALUATING IRANIAN ACADEMIC WEBSITES IN ORDER TO IMPROVE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

It has been well known that websites are important tools in education and research. Regular and precise reviewing and evaluating the structure and content of the studied websites will indicate their strengths and weaknesses and could have an effective rule in achieving a better performance and quality in education and research. A successful design of an academic website with a higher and more effective quality is an essential issue. Unfortunately, although the importance of an effective and high-quality website for universities has been proven, numerous academic websites do not provide enough user satisfaction and quality, leading to a major negative effect on the popularity of the universities owning them. In addition, improving the quality of the home page increases website usability and accessibility. In this paper, a number of criteria have been considered and Iranian university website home pages have been evaluated based on the determined criteria.