This qualitative study looked at rural women’s participation in higher education learning through the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) modes. It explored the motives and challenges in addition to proposing measures for improving rural women’s participation in learning in higher education via ODL in Tanzania. The study used purposive and snowball sampling to select the participants. Moreover, the study used interviews and documentary review to gather data. The findings show that women participated in higher education via ODL primarily because of the need to transform their socio-economic wellbeing and status. Other specific motivators include qualifying for promotion, salary increment, recognition, enhanced employment opportunities, and retirement benefits in addition to acquiring life event management skills. Women students’ challenges included poor infrastructure, socio-cultural limitations, health challenges, financial barriers, increased learning costs, lack of quality learning space, and poor access to human and inadequate learning resources. Overall, the poor rural infrastructure emerged to be the main barrier to the full participation of women in learning. The study, therefore, calls for the improvement of social, infrastructural and human resources to increase rural women participation in learning.

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This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study that has explored rural students’ experiences with online learning in Tanzania. The study used purposive sampling to select twenty-five participants. It employed a phenomenological design, primarily using semi-structured interviews coupled with document review, to obtain data on students’ lived experiences. The data was then subjected to thematic analysis to generate study findings which show that rural students used the Moodle system to support their online learning. Moreover, they had Zoom meetings, discussion forums and WhatsApp as recourse to the Moodle system. According to the findings, the students faced challenges such as poor access to the Internet, prohibitive costs of learning infrastructure, and limited technical skills. Furthermore, these students faced inflexible schedules and limited access to assistive technologies. As a result, they complemented their study processes with downloaded materials, printed learning materials, regional centre physical visits and university graduates’ additional support. The study concludes that the complex nature of the rural environment marked by limited infrastructural and technological development makes studying through ODL doubly daunting for rural-based students. The paper, therefore, recommends instituting transformative strategies aimed to enhance the quality of rural students’ lived experiences of ODL online learning.