Let’s invest in open online course

" ... The irony, though, is that the many disillusioned and unfulfilled mass of auto repairers out there are really looking for ways to improve themselves, but the constraints of time (to be taken out of their busy work schedule) and distance (to many of the skills-upgrade training centres/programmes-like ours or the many sponsored by the National Automotive Council or state agencies like the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Education Board-across the federation) are the two inhibitive factors preventing many of them from self-upgrade-actualisation. Subsequent to the magnificent success of a two-day seminar that we, in conjunction with the Centre for Lifelong Learning of the National Open University of Nigeria, held in September 2012 (where we expected eight hundred participants and more than three thousand showed up from across the nation), we have been encouraged by Prof. Abdul R. Yesufu, the director of NOUN-CLL and Dr. Mande Samaila, the coordinator of our collaboration with the centre, to find a way to help articulate the passion of the Vice-Chancellor of the NOUN, Prof. Vincent Ado Tenebe, FCM, J.P., 'to take learning to a man who needs it, where he wants it'. That’s why we’ve resorted to invest in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) methodology, which is a video-presented interactive online training forum aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the internet which anybody (practising technicians, students of automotive engineering in conventional schools and Do-It-Yourself enthusiasts) can register for without having to leave their locations of daily subsistence/existence and asynchronously take their lectures and do their tests at the time suitable for them ..."