Though online education is not yet very popular in Nigeria, a number of platforms are striving to break the ice and get Nigerians to seek education on the internet — Tutor.ng is one of them.
The online learning and training education platform provides a favorable online learning community — including live classes — which is ideal for teaching and learning courses at a user’s convenience.
Fehintolu Olaogun, Tutor.ng’sco-founder and head of product, believes online education can help in improving out-of-classroom learning in Nigeria; he said it also reinforces what’s already been learned in class.
“The physical classroom offers live interaction but doesn’t give learners a chance to go over what they learn, and in some cases classes are too large which reduces learning outcomes. Out-of-classroom learning on platforms like tutor.ng reinforce what a learner learns in class. It also solves the dependency of traditional learning on physical locations,” Olaogun said.
He noted that online education also reduces the barrier of entry for educators to acquire and teach students.
“They don’t need to pay for physical space and other resources,” he said.
Prospects of Online Education in Nigeria
While he described education as an effective transfer of knowledge in any form, Olaogun stressed that Nigeria’s huge online education prospects also come with huge challenges.
“But that’s what going into this venture was all about, solving those challenges,” he said.
The challenges in the sector include internet penetration, reliable internet connection in areas that have penetration, power, and quality of content.
“We can only hope internet penetration and reliability improves but we play an active role in content generation to have effective learning content on the site,” he added.
While he doesn’t see online education replacing schools in Nigeria, he believes that the education system could evolve into blended learning, a case in which all forms of brick and mortar education models are reinforced with online education.
“The brick and mortar learning systems can’t meet the demand of providing high quality education to a large number of prospective students; limited access to the internet also greatly impedes the adoption of e-learning and blended learning models,” he said. “These and a few other factors pose a huge challenge for education in Nigeria.”
The Road to Expanding In-Classroom Learning
Tutor.ng was created out of the need to create a platform that gives educators tools to expand in-classroom learning — and at the same time provide people with a platform to learn out of the classroom.
“It was also created based on the need of educators to effectively teach learners at an affordable cost using online tools,” Olaogun added.
Following the official January 1, 2014 launch, it was discovered that the first set of users were predominantly composed of tutors who were excited about having a platform to create courses and aid in classroom learning.
The level of acceptance of the platform is high and offers diverse classes including soft skill courses, language learning and exam preparation . There is no restriction on the type of content users can create. Essentially, there’s a unique course for everyone who takes part.
“Everything can be taught and learned online. I’m a good example, I learned how to swim online,” Olaogun said. “As a learner you can use the platform by enrolling for any course of your choice, while [for] a tutor we provide tools to create courses and deliver the content to your learners.”
Growth, Competitiveness and Partnerships
He also shared some of the platform’s success stories.
“One is aiding out-of-classroom learning in some University of Lagos post graduate courses. Most of the students of post graduate courses in universities have daytime jobs — hence the need to have out-of-classroom lessons to make up for their busy schedules,” he said.
On the ultimate vision for the platform he said the goal is to create a teaching and learning platform that helps educators and learners at the same time.
“I am satisfied at the company’s current stage; however, we are still learning and adapting our platform,” he said.
Going forward the focus will be on helping tutors to create effective course contents.
“E-learning has two broad spheres, one being content and the other delivery. Helping tutors create content will go a long way in improving the quality of our content, while we keep improving our technology to deliver content effectively to learners,” he said.
Even though the company is not yet self-sustaining, he said, it is generating revenue and recording growth in the number of active users since its January launch.
“We currently have over 2,000 active users with over 5,000 total registered in 6 months. We plan to double that tally at least [before the end of December],” Olaogun said. “We have partnerships, the latest being with sterio.me. We also have a few in the pipeline.”