ABSTRACT
The 2019 novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, triggered a global pandemic with far-reaching implications for higher education. In Botswana, as in other developing countries, there was a significant paradigm shift from face-to-face to online teaching and learning. Policy makers and education practitioners resolved to consider online education as an alternative method of delivery to ensure continuity in teaching and learning. It is, therefore, against this backdrop that this chapter conceptually explores the use of information communication technologies (ICTs), in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era to facilitate interaction in an open and distance learning delivery mode. There was a need to immediately switch to computer-supported learning, which needed an Internet connection to function. This chapter problematizes the fact that though the Ministry of Tertiary Education came up with interventions, societal and educational inequalities between public and privately owned higher education institutions will become more predominant. Using the lens of Gorsky et al. (2004), the author argues that the noble intent of governments may facilitate further social exclusion and the digital divide.
