Online Courses - Evaluation Report - 2016-2021

Since December 2016 FunDza has offered online courses covering a range of topics. Some are aimed at supporting the high school English curriculum, and cover topics such as punctuation, essay writing and grammar. Others draw on FunDza’s popular stories as a basis for literature study. Then there are also courses around a particular theme, or tips on preparing to find a job (for those who have already left school).

The courses are offered through FunDza’s custom-built learning management system, and young people that access the fundza.mobi site are able to register for them at no charge.

Participants receive electronic certificates of completion at the end of the course, and of excellence, if they achieved over 70%.

The following is an evaluation of this open learning platform. External M&E consultant Robin Pocock has been working with the FunDza course data to find out a number of important things. For example – how many people have participated in the courses, how has course participation changed over time, and do those whodo more courses perform better than those who complete just one or two.

The good news is that the indications are that those who do more courses tend to score significantly better on quizzes than those who have just completed one or two. And, of those who are highly committed course participants (who had completed eight or more courses), it is clear that their performance improves over time.

We plan to investigate these results more deeply through additional evaluations in the years to come.

In the meantime, please read the evaluation report here.