TOWARD A DISTANCE EDUCATION BASED STRATEGY FOR INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM IN HIGHER EDUCATION OF IRAN

ABSTRACT

The present study is to investigate the necessity of internationalization of curricula in Higher Education of Iran; it also determines the effect of characteristics of new generation of distance education on curriculum internationalization and presents some influential strategies for internationalizing curricula of Iran Higher Education with distance education approach. For this study, after making 12 personal interviews and conducting 2 sessions of focus groups, 543 professors and students of five universities filled in a questionnaire; the collected data were analyzed using one-sample t-test, Friedman test and variance analysis. 

The results indicated that internationalizing curricula is necessary in order to follow the globalization trend and to introduce the Iranian culture and civilization to the world; therefore, distance education approach is a thoughtful alternative for this process because of its high flexibility and the harmony of its curricula with the international curricula. Expanding international collaboration of universities, using the international language for teaching, providing resources, founding the infrastructures based on technology, revising rules and their clarification and developing curriculum elements based on the transformative approach are the most essential strategies.