Assessment of the Quality of Practicum Implementation at Farhangian University of Mazandaran

The present study investigates the process of implementing the practicum program at Farhangian University in Mazandaran province in order to find its strengths and weaknesses. This research is looking for solutions to improve the status of the practicum program to present them to the authorities and decision makers of this program. This research is written in mix-method and after deep interview with experts and proficient in practicum, the interviews were encoded with NVIVO software. Its narration was done through the method of pluralism and through the long-term conflict of the researcher with the research space and trust with the subjects of the research; the research space was also monitored by an external judge. To achieve the reliability of the codes, two other coders were used and an agreement was reached between the coders. Then a questionnaire was designed and presented to those students of Farhangian University of Mazandaran, who passed at least two terms of practicum course. The qualitative statistical society in this study included 5 experts and 20 knowledgeable authorities in practicum curriculum that were selected through snowball sampling method. The statistical population of this study was 550 people and the sample was 226 people based on Cochran formula that responded to the questionnaires with ratio stratified random sampling. Validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a number of interns and its reliability was calculated by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the result was 0.954. Data were analyzed by SPSS software and finally, the results were presented as a model. The results of the study showed that most of the weaknesses were in the school part and inappropriate physical environment of schools for the implementation of practicum activities and the greatest strengths were related to guidance by tutors and their supervision and evaluation of students' performance. In the end, after finding the weaknesses, there were some suggestions for improving the status of practicum program at Farhangian University of Mazandaran.