Web 2.0 as an Instructional Tool in Teaching Large Classes at Funaab, Nigeria

Abstract

Digital technology has become an indispensable communication tool for students and educators in the past two decades. Currently, academic institutions view digital technologies as essential instructional content delivery media for both pedagogical and research purposes. This study assesses the extent of improvement of students’ learning through the use of Web 2.0 as an instructional tool in large classes using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). It juxtaposes this with the overall performance of students after the use of traditional lecture delivery method on some selected courses at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Nigeria. These experiments were carried out at the end of the 2014/2015 academic session. Within this period, out of the selected courses, two courses (GNS 103 and GNS 204) were taught without the use of ICT technology while the others (HSM 207 and AAD 507) were taught using Web 2.0. The study revealed that there was a significant difference in the evaluation of the academic performance of the students taught with Web 2.0 technology, compared with those taught without it: 95.4% of the students taught with Web 2.0 technology in class were able to make evaluative comments and contributions to t