ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS (AIAs) FOR EFFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION: AN EVALUATION OF AWARENESS AND UTILIZATION IN FEDERAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION OBUDU, CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

The study adopted the survey design to examine Artificial Intelligence Applications (AIAs) for efficient educational management and administration: an evaluation of awareness and utilization. Consequently, three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The population consisted of 132 administrators from Federal College of Education Obudu in Cross River State. The whole population was used as the sample. The instrument for the study was entitled, “Awareness and Utilization of Artificial Intelligence Application for Educational Management and Administration Questionnaire” (AUAIAEMAQ). The instrument was validated by experts and its overall reliability index was established at .85 using Cronbach alpha statistics. Means and standard deviation was used to answer research questions. The criterion (estimated) mean for accepting the item opinions of the respondents as positive was 2.50 and above while any mean below 2.50 was regarded as negative for the research questions. The instruments adopted the modified four point type Likert scale of Very Aware (VA), Aware (A), Unaware (UA), Very Unaware (VUA); Very High Extent (VHE), High Extent (HE), Low Extent (LE), Very Low Extent (VLE) and Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D), Strongly Disagree (SD) with a weighting of 4, 3, 2 and 1 for research question 1, 2 and 3. The AIAS awareness, utilization level and challenges were determined using the following criteria; Grand means ≤ 2= Low, >2 ≤ 3= average and >3= high. Means 0-2=low awareness/utilization, 2.1-2.9= average awareness/utilization, and 3.0-above= high awareness/utilization level while the Nonparametric Independent Sample Mann-Whitney U Test was used to test the hypotheses at .05 level of significance because the data obtain did not meet certain statistics assumptions (Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for normality) for the use of a parametric statistic. The researcher, therefore, administered 132 copies of the questionnaires to the respondents and retrieved them for the analysis of the research questions and hypotheses. Data collected were analysed using IBM SPSS statistics 23. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the adoption of AI has thus been steadily acknowledged in educational management and administration as the most significant method by which administrators connect organizational activities. It was, therefore, recommended that there should be conscious efforts by educational institutions to intermittently trained administrators to be acquainted with the current trend of artificial intelligence tools used to ameliorate distance in job responsibilities.