Digital divide and social justice in an open distance e-learning institution: Pre-service teachers in rural South Africa reflection on using Moodle as a learning management system

Abstract

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are a cornerstone of Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL). Literature suggests that LMSs are presented as instruments for democratizing access to higher education. In South Africa, LMSs are particularly instrumental, given the country's legacy of apartheid and historical disparities in accessing higher education. However, limited empirical research has examined how first-year rural students experience LMS-mediated learning and its ramifications for social justice. Drawing on reflective journals from six purposively selected first-year pre-service teachers at a South African ODeL institution, this qualitative paper explores how the digital divide structures their engagement with Moodle, an LMS. Guided by Fraser's social justice theory, findings indicate that the digital divide extends beyond material access to include misrecognition of rural students' circumstances, limited pedagogical inclusion, and inflexible temporal structures embedded in LMS design. This contributes to assessment pressure, pedagogical disconnection, and social isolation. In this paper, we conceptualize the digital divide as structural violence surfacing from institutional arrangements that reproduce educational injustices. The paper argues that socially just e-learning in ODeL requires attention not only to technological provision but also to versatile pedagogy, temporality, and relational support that recognize rural students' unique existential realities in post-apartheid South Africa.