Speaking at the launch, the executive director of Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning (BOCODOL), Dr Daniel Tau said that the journal would allow members to play their role as educationists in the region and contribute to the ongoing debate about the efficacy of ODL as a mode of education delivery. "This particular debate should involve educationists and academics from across the conventional and distance education divide," he said at the launch held at BOCODOL. He indicated that critics of ODL should get a platform through the journal and state the shortcomings.
"Similarly ODL practitioners should engage in the debate to prove the worthiness of their field of education. Such engagements would hopefully enable us to cross-fertilise and reconcile our ideas regarding education and how it should best be shaped and delivered to our people," he said. He urged the southern African region to admit that it has remained in the fringes of distance education discourse for far too long. He explained that distance education practitioners in the region have largely remained consumers of knowledge and information whose application to their context is arguably suspect. He said it is a truism that there is currently a dearth of literature on ODL development and evolution in southern Africa. He added that the same claim could be made about education in general. "We are not heard around and afar.
