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The end of 2019 saw the advent of the coronavirus “Covid-19” that spread like wildfire, killing thousands of people and causing havoc in all sectors of life, including in education. Covid-19 and its acceleration to a pandemic forced many countries abruptly to close down education institutions, leaving those who were economically able to depend on digital environments in using online learning. However, even when some higher learning institutions in developing countries such as South Africa were prepared to teach in digital environments, lockdown held learners captive in their communities. Many communities are areas of low bandwidth, having intermittent networks and suffering from constant electricity interruptions. Such challenges aggravated the already existing education inequalities in developing countries and rendered online learning less effective.
Education inequalities in many developing countries have been a major challenge and are attributed to various aspects. Aspects are so numerous that even those learners who pass their final high school examinations sometimes fail to join tertiary institutions. This failure comes about for a variety of reasons, ranging from distances from the nearest higher education institutions (as many are located in major cities) to lack of accommodation for those who are admitted for studies. These heterogeneous challenges have led to many capable students being denied higher education or suffering delays in joining these institutions (Botha & Swanepoel, 2015). These challenges could best be counteracted by leveraging the massive open online courses (MOOCs). According to Liyanagunawardena et al. (2017) and Zhu and Bonk (2019), MOOCs are a model of education delivery that has no limit to enrolment. MOOCs are open to everyone, usually with no tuition costs, and with a curriculum that leads to an award after completion. The introduction of MOOCs can be seen as an extension of various approaches used in teaching and learning in terms of open online access and scalability. MOOCs have become commonplace in the e-learning landscape and have attracted learners from a variety of backgrounds (Alamri, 2022).
Oyo and Kalema (2014) observed that the advent of MOOCs could have solved the education inequalities in developing countries, such as access to education. This is because MOOCs could allow rural learners to register affordably and to obtain qualifications with accredited institutions far from their homes at relatively very low cost. However, most MOOCs platforms were developed to operate in areas with good bandwidth. Such a limitation has led many rural areas, especially those in developing countries, to remain educationally excluded (Deng & Benckendorff, 2021; Liyanagunawardena et al., 2013; Zhu & Bonk, 2019).
According to Marques and Azevedo (2017), the primary aim of MOOCs is to open up education that provides free access to courses at a tertiary level to as many students as possible. Two key features of MOOCS give them an advantage over university online courses: Anyone can access MOOCs free of charge; courses are developed to support a very large number of students (i.e., scalability). MOOCs are developed to support the idea that knowledge can be shared freely and the desire to learn can be met without demographic, economic, and geographical constraints (Zakharova, & Tanasenko, 2019). Two major forms of MOOCs exist, namely, the cMOOCs and the xMOOCs. The cMOOCs are based on the theory of learning that allows learners to construct the learning process through interactions. Conversely, the xMOOCs are structured in the same way as the traditional online higher education courses (Zhu et al., 2018). Apart from providing an enhanced tool for education delivery, online learning also promotes flexibility, accessibility to open educational resources, and good communication among learners and facilitators. Hence, this allows opening up boundaries for tertiary education to those learners who are less privileged and have traditionally been excluded (Traxler, 2018). Most notably, these new learning technologies are bringing about massive change in tertiary education worldwide.