Celebrating 100 years of Open Distance Education in Zambia 1923 - 2023: Achievements and Lessons for the Next Centenary through the Lenses of University of Zambia

Abstract

This landmark article traces the history of Open and Distance Education in Zambia since 1923 and establish key mile stones attained and lessons generated to inform the future. The study rides on archival online data, a non-obtrusive approach complemented with University of Zambia postgraduate alumni engaged through Social Media to illuminate the discourse at hand. Emergent from the findings are critical milestones attained such as the transformation of Open and Distance education education from physical to virtual space, from print to online resource, from social science to highly technical study areas such as nursing sciences, agricultural and natural sciences. There has been mass adoption of open and distance education nearly by nearly all learning institutions at tertiary level in Zambia owing to the University of Zambia’s pioneering experience in Open and Distance Education. Over and above, this is a positive indicator that show transformation in attitudes of the Zambian community. While success attained is visible for all to see, a number of bottle necks still remain that need improving upon if the next generation is to benefit from the centenary experience. Lessons include: (i) the need to improve ODL friendly infrastructure, (ii) the need to invest in tailor-made programme to build capacity of ODL practitioners, (iii) the need to maximize technology in the delivery of programmes on offer to the community.