No doubt, education is one of the fundamental factors for economic growth. For a country to achieve sustainable development, there is high need to invest in its human capital development.
DoviLearn.com is an innovative e-learning portal founded by a Nigerian startup, Dovichi Services, with Okeke Vincent Chidozie as the Chief Executive Officer and founder.
Education equips the people, who in return contribute to the development of the economy. In the case of DoviLearn.com, if more people are equipped with different business skills, or professional skills, including softskills, they can startup new businesses, and become proficient in those businesses with the right training, which in return will contribute immensely to the country’s GDP.
Whether online education or traditional form of education, one thing is certain; the benefits of education can never be over emphasized. How successful one intends to become, the length one intends to go, evolves on their willingness to learn new things, acquire new skills and adapt in today’s fast evolving World.
Nigeria’s key player in the Elearning industry: DoviLearn.com, launched in 2015 with just 5 courses it secured from its partner instructors, the startup continues to thrive in spite of recessing economy, in a space of 12 months, it has grown its courseware to 40 courses, in a bid to close it at 500 courses by 2020.
In an interview, DoviLearn founder – Okeke Vincent Chidozie narrates his story, on the reasons for setting up a massive Elearning project.
“The idea for DoviLearn came after several direct involvement in physical trainings; some as attendee, while some as host/organizer. I discovered physical trainings even though great, but had their limitations and constraints.
From an attendee perspective, I would say it was usually expensive for me and also inconvenient. Living in a big city like Lagos State, which is one of the biggest cities in Africa, attending physical trainings even within the city could be quite expensive and somewhat inconvenient, and also, the scheduling may not be convenient for me. Thus, I started resorting to online training through various top global elearning providers like Alison.com, Udemy.com and Lynda.com.
While taking training on these foreign operated portals, I discovered that for certain courses like Digital Marketing or HR for instance, these trainings in some cases may not suit my (Nigerian) market contexts and peculiarities.
Also, looking at things from a training organizer perspective which I later became, I discovered that it was difficult for me to organize training, as this could be somewhat expensive, paying for halls to accommodate maybe 100 attendees could be ridiculously cost in Lagos, at the end, many people may not be able to attend due to high set fees and the inconvenience in terms of schedule or location.
With these difficulties explained above, I saw ELearning as a way out. Thus. I started working on an ELearning project that can enable people take courses online, and still be able to engage with their instructor(s), instead of traveling or going far for it, and this DoviLearn offers.
DoviLearn is not just an ELearning portal, the technology also features an ELearning community where candidates taking courses/training online can engage with their instructors, or other co-candidates in the community.” Okeke Vincent Chidozie, founder of DoviLearn explains.
One great opportunity for DoviLearn in the Nigeria market is that we are localizing contents, yes, and that is key. When we launched, we launched with foreign made courses on our portal. Because many Nigerian instructors do not have courses or their trainings already digitized, we went for what was available, which were foreign instructor’s digital short course contents. Now, more local instructors are becoming aware of ELearning, hence digitizing their trainings/courses and making more revenues from them by selling them online, and we pride ourselves among the leaders providing Elearning platform in Nigeria for Nigerian trainers to sell their courses. DoviLearn is among the earliest fully integrated Elearning portal from Nigeria, if not the first, Okeke Vincent added.
It should also be recalled that in 2015, Ventures Africa listed DoviLearn.com among 5 Most Innovative Startups for the year, alongside 4 other startups; Printivo (An online printing company), ChopUP (A digital gaming company), PrepClass (A home tutor service company) and Discovery Science.
The startup, Dovichi Services also disclosed that it is currently part of Facebook Bootstrap Programme known as FBstart, a programme initiated and managed by Facebook Inc. to support entrepreneurs across the globe, Dovichi Services was one of its beneficiaries in 2016, where they received 40k USD worth of support in services and tools from Facebook Inc.
In an interview with Dovichi Services Chief Operating Officer (COO), Mr Bright Oleka, who explained the milestone for DoviLearn from a Business perspective, stating that some of the notable business achievements for DoviLearn.com were corporate partnerships with companies, that more organizations are becoming aware on the need to have online training facilities for their staffs, as a way to grow their businesses and keep them in the forefront.
Bright Oleka also noted that more end users are also becoming aware of the elearning portal – DoviLearn, and are now understanding the need for elearning, not only that courses deployed on the portal are about 90% more affordable compared to when they attend these trainings in physical classes, but also give them the chances for more continuous engagement with their instructors and other co-students.
He called on government and their agencies, local and international businesses to take elearning serious and consider elearning a as the way forward, adding that elearning could cut down by far, cost incurred by many government agencies and other businesses in sending public servants/staffs abroad for training.
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