Assessing agricultural insurance agents attitude towards e-learning application in teaching them

Agricultural sector provides over 75 percent of required food of Iran's population. It also contributes to 10.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product ( GDP), 23 percent of employment and a considerable amount of non-oil export. However, it highly depends on the environmental issues and is usually affected by natural disasters, which make a huge damage to the livelihoods and annual income of farmers. Since 2002, Agricultural Product Insurance Fund used a new approach through the Private Insurance Agents ( PIAs) which provide efficient and effective insurance services to farmers. Providing training courses for PIAs is associated with many problems, because they are scattered in cities and villages. Considering the benefits of e-learning, its application in teaching PIAs s can be useful. In this regard, development of effective e-learning in this section, regardless of analyzing knowledge and attitude of PIAs is not possible. So, the aim of this study was analyze knowledge and attitudes of PIAs regarding using the e-learning in their teaching. A descriptive-correlation survey approach was used in this study. The population consisted of PIAs in Zanjan province (n=77). The questionnaire was used for data collection in this study. The results showed that PIAs attitude to e-learning is relatively positive. Results also showed that there is significant difference between Computer and Internet skills, average hours worked with the Internet and computer, Experience in agricultural product Insurance and attitude towards e-learning system. T-test result showed that there is a significant difference between the attitudes of people with experience in e-learning courses with those without experience. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.