EXTENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INTEGRATION IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the extent of artificial intelligence integration in the management of public universities in South East, Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study while two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population was 3755 academic staff. The population comprised 2708 males and 1047 females academic staff in the five state Universities in South east Nigeria. The sample size was 376 respondents which comprised 271 male and 105 female academic staff in the five state universities in South East. Stratified and proportionate random sampling techniques were employed in obtaining the sample of the respondents. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled “Artificial Intelligence Integration in the Management of Public Universities Questionnaire (AIIMPUQ). The instrument was face-validated by three experts. The reliability co-efficient of the instrument was computed using Cronbach Alpha statistic which yielded 0.79 and 0.82 for clusters 1 and 2. The instrument had an overall reliability index of 0.81 which indicated that the instrument was reliable and therefore considered appropriate for use. Mean scores and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, and t-test statistic was used to test the hypotheses. The findings showed that artificial intelligence has been integrated in teaching and research to a very low extent in public universities in South East, Nigeria. One of the recommendations made was that University administrators should invest in AI training programmes and infrastructure to enhance educational and research capabilities.