DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN ACADEMIC RESEARCH USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BY STUDENTS OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT IN RIVERS STATE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to investigate the difficulties encountered in academic research using artificial intelligence by students of Educational Management in Rivers State University. The study was guided by three specific objectives and three research questions. The research employed a mixed-method design, integrating both quantitative and qualitative approaches within a single study to leverage the strengths of each method and compensate for their respective weaknesses. the study purposively sampled 71 participants comprising 20 lecturers, 22 postgraduate and 29 undergraduates students, as research sample from lecturers, final year undergraduate students and postgraduate students carrying out seminar, project, dissertation and thesis for the 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 academic sessions. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through questionnaire and students’ research reports respectively. The questionnaire used for quantitative data was faced validated and with internal consistency reliability coefficients of 0.71, 0.73 and 0.81respectively for the three components. This was obtained through Cronbach Alpha. Quantitative data was analysed using mean and statrdard deviation while qualitative data was analysed using document analysis. The findings of the study revealed that undergraduate and postgraduate students had varying degrees of difficulties in different aspects of research activities including framing research problem, planning the research as well as conducting the research. It was therefore recommended that, to make the training more engaging, faculty should re-evaluate the instructional delivery strategy using AI in courses like Research Methodology and Research Statistics to incorporate active learning techniques