Evaluation of Moodle OER for Junior Course Business Subjects Students at Botswana Open University’s Centre for Open Schooling

Abstract

The paper shares some of the challenges and lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic in Botswana and how Botswana Open University stayed resiliently. Our focus is on various aspects of ODeL (students and tutors).

The paper discuses MOOODLE portal which was piloted at Botswana Open University’s Centre for Open Schooling in 2021 for Junior Secondary School students of business subjects comprising Commerce, Accounting and Office Procedures. This paper drew inspiration from the fact that MOODLE OERs portal is a niche in Open Schools and the that Commonwealth of Learning (COL), among other objectives offers guidance on use of OER in Open Schools. A total of 50 students were selected randomly from BOU’s five regions and one class of 30 students from a conventional Junior School participated in the pilot which ran for six months from April 2021 September 2021. The portal assisted students to keep learning ongoing, as University needed response to Covid19. There was need and urgency at BOU to address the desperate situation Open Schooling found itself in without tangible eLearning infrastructure. The paper is based on the experiences of the piloting students and tutors, their observations, as well as the literature review and draws recommendations from aforesaid.