A regular feature of the Nigerian tertiary education context is large numbers of students crammed into small classrooms or lecture theatres. This context had long begged for the creation of innovative learning spaces and adoption of more suitable and engaging pedagogies. Recourse to technology support and experimenting with the WIKI as a learning tool at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria gave us an insight into the benefits and challenges of the set-up and use of new knowledge technologies in our technology-poor context.

This paper reports an experiment in an extra-large (XXL) class of freshmen (2000+) on a module of second language project writing using the WIKI. The paper emphasises the unique advantages of the WIKI in a large blended learning class and the affordances for socio-cultural and collaborative learning experience. In creating new learning teams and forging collaboration among learners leveraging one another’s abilities, the wiki experience extended the ‘classroom’ beyond the physical space, engaged students in interactional communication in the second language, encouraged negotiation of meaning, and challenged learners in finding their ‘solutions’ to real life problems around them, aside from acquisition of hands-on digital literacy. The paper reports on how learners experience and participate in learning on a technology supported module.

Data for the investigation and evaluation of students’ learning experiences were collected using teacher observation of team formation and collaboration on activities offline and tracked students’ logs, footprints and activities on group pages online; students’ feedback on the end-of-course learners evaluation forms; and their reflections as gleaned from their comments, encouraged and freely made continually by many from inception through to the end of the course, on the front page of our wiki. The report employs both qualitative and quantitative parameters in presenting the report.

Results indicated a large number of students had no idea what e-learning was, had just some computer and internet skills. But e-learning, it was paradoxically resoundingly admitted, remains the hope for Africa’s technology-poor educational context.

Nigerian language teachers’ appreciation and application of language teaching theories, pedagogy and methodologies are not keeping pace with developments in the rest of the world. This is because the Nigerian language-teaching context continues to be beset by numerous constraints, from social to professional. The new knowledge technologies offer opportunities in coping with some of the constraints identified. But how literate areNigeria’s language teachers in knowledge and skills to take advantage of the knowledge technologies, and to participate in global teaching-learning communities? This study examined attitudes to ICT through the use and ownership of a computer and frequency of use; use of and operations performed on the Internet by sampling a population of language teachers involved mainly in EAP, and fresh students in science and technology. The results confirmed the outcomes of an earlier investigation of EAP teachers’ low level of competence in computer and Internet use. It was clear that language teachers’ use of the computer and the Internet is predominantly for e-mailing activities. The paper reports the findings of the study and discusses the way to go in view of the emerging realities and the potentials for obviating the numerous constraints to teaching and learning in a developing country. It proposes a new wave of Teacher Development Initiative (TDI) but with a modified approach from the 1989 – 1993 Nigerian projects.

Large class size is a phenomenon too well known in Nigeria, and indeed much of Africa. “How much learning can take place in a class of 300, for example, as opposed to a class of half a dozen learners?” is how LoCastro (2001) posed the question of where to begin the consideration of issues around large classes in language learning. Three main factors account for poor learning experience in such classes: pedagogy, management and affective factors. Confronted by constraints of inadequate classroom, poor physical and learning facilities and large numbers of students vis-a-vis teachers, the teacher feels overwhelmed.

Learning technologies offer some means of vitiating the challenges but they also create their own, especially for teachers who are third world digital migrants working in technology-poor environments. At the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Nigeria the Web 2.0 Wiki authoring tool offered such an opportunity to create some innovative learning spaces in our English as a Second Language (ESL) module with a focus on academic writing. The new learning spaces that complement rather than replace the traditional physical classrooms equally required new teaching-learning approaches, pedagogies and methods of ‘classroom’ management that were new even to teachers.

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Working within English as a Second Language (ESL) situation, the Nigeria EAP context presents a fairly different type of provision from the EAP inUKinstitutions for international students. This paper looks at the Nigerian EAP context but focuses on a specific programme (at the Federal University of Technology, Akure) that integratesReadingand Writing and the procedures and processes that have been adopted to deliver the course. The course design, with the materials, was based on identified learner needs, teaching/learning context and target goals. In describing the trialling experience over a period of ten years, we focus on the range of classroom techniques and methodologies of getting the students to work, sometimes individually and at other times collaboratively. The paper centres on ways in which IT is being integrated into the course, in the last two years, in an attempt to get round some of the constraints of our teaching-learning situation, and to enhance the delivery of the course.

We live in a fast changing world of technology. The Information Technology age has brought on new challenges, especially in the developing countries. One such challenge is to question the literacy levels of language teachers, not only in reading printed or written texts and producing them, but in the new knowledge technologies; and in teachers’ abilities to transmit knowledge, facilitate knowledge construction and the learning skills of their students. A preliminary survey of the skills required in teaching and the level of competencies of teaching staff indicates that while some teachers in science and technology subject areas are coping fairly well in the use of the new technologies in their areas of study, language teachers lag behind in adapting the literacy technologies to their teaching methodologies. This paper looks at some of the uses of the knowledge technologies and how teachers might adapt them in the communicative language ‘classrooms’, even in our rather infelicitous situations.

Change, a philosophical dictum maintains, is the only permanent thing. The agency of change remains the dynamics of nature and man as a crucial factor in nature. Advances in technology, especially in transportation and communication, have turned vast areas of the world into a global community. Although the notion of globalisation is variously conceived, its import and impact in education cannot be ignored. While research and its insights in linguistics and other areas of language studies have brought about changes in language teaching theories and pedagogical methodologies, literacy and knowledge technologies continue to place the fruits of research within the reach of many more. As purveyors of knowledge and facilitators in the process of construction and transmission of it from generation to generation, teachers have the challenge to harness, adapt and adopt appropriate language teaching theories, pedagogical methodologies, and knowledge technologies for effectiveness and efficiency. Nigerian ESL teachers, working within huge constraints, have a special responsibility, in spite of limited opportunities for development. This paper focuses on the opportunities knowledge technologies offer through globalisation, and the imperative for ESL teachers to harness pedagogical theories, methodologies and technology that accord with their peculiar situations. It goes further to propose some steps that may be taken to get to think globally in order to act for local benefits.

The incidence of Large Classes (LCs) has always been a feature of ELT in the third world classrooms, especially in the former British colonies. Since the introduction of CUT approach the problem has become more glaring as the approach is meant to involve the use of the whole language in and out of the classroom, authentically and interactively, and be learner-centred. To use the CLT approach in LCs requires additional effort in terms of methodology that ensures teacher-student and student-student interactions; learners learning individually and collaboratively, and learners taking active and substantial control of their learning activities. This paper looks at the role of curriculum, materials and the methodologies that can provide the synergy for the realization of this goal. Using the instance of the teaching-learning ethos at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, the paper proposes that Learner Autonomy combining some of the emerging methodologies could provide such synergy that enables teachers and learners cope with the realities of their situation.

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The Term Paper genre is a viable writing project through which EAP teachers in developing countries can explore the value and reward of skills integration through the process-product approach. This paper presents an outline of two sample units from such a course that continues to engage and motivate the learners constructively, giving each one a measure of control and autonomy, to a productive outcome.