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.