A professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and provost of College of Education, Hong Adamawa State, Benson Yusuf Baha, has advocated the inclusion of AI in teaching and learning in the higher institutions, especially at the colleges of education, where teachers are produced for the basic education level.
He said this will not only impact positively on the traditional way of teaching and learning at this level, but will also transform it drastically.
Professor Baha stated this in Abuja recently while delivering a lead paper on the topic ‘The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education: Towards a Framework to Regulate the Ethical Consequence of AI in Nigeria,’ at the maiden biennial conference of the Committee of Provost of Colleges of Education in Nigeria (CPCEN), held at the Ukeje Hall, NCCE.
According to him, AI has the potential of helping in attaining sustainable development goals by addressing some of the challenges in education by providing innovative teaching and learning practices, as well as accelerating access to education.
He emphasised that there is an urgent need to harness the full benefits of AI in developing countries like Nigeria, where the ratio of students to teachers is low and access to quality in rural areas is completely absent.
He highlighted some of the benefits of AI to include personalised learning, robot-mediated learning, automated assessment, and educational data mining, access to research tolls, administrative efficiency, among others.
To enjoy the benefits of AI tools in education, he said it would required that teachers develop a new set of competencies and literacy necessary to understand the technology as well as their limitations and unexpected drawback of such systems.
“Hence, this calls for massive training of teachers in our colleges,” he said.
He recommended that the government should provide digital infrastructure to colleges of education and other institutions of learning in the country with a view to leveraging the benefits of internet technologies and AI in teaching and learning.
He also tasked the government with the establishment of micro-teaching laboratories for colleges of education, equipped with AI teaching and learning tools to narrow the existing digital divide within learning environments.
The permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs Didi Esther Walson-Jack, in her address at the conference averred that “no nation can develop above the level of education of its citizens. This implies that education is a key determinant factor and foundation of a nation’s development”.
Charging heads of learning institutions who gathered at the conference, she said:” As heads of institutions tasked with the responsibilities of producing future educators and leaders of tomorrow, we must seize the opportunity presented to us to revitalise our education sector and Colleges of Education in particular, to meet the evolving needs of our nation.”
The realms of Innovation, Technology and Artificial Intelligence, she noted are currently shaping the landscape of the future, hence, students in the Colleges of education must be prepared to take advantage of these relatively new fields of learning, to obtain technology and AI training that would enable them compete with students in other tiers of tertiary institutions.
Meanwhile, earlier in his welcome address, the Provost of Federal College of Education who is also the chairman of the Committee of Provost, Professor Faruk Rashid Haruna noted that the Artificial Intelligence dubbed as AI, and the recent upgrade of the colleges of education to a dual mode are development innovation greeted with mixed feelings of excitement and trepidation.
He said that the conference was put in place to address the pros and cons of development vis-à-vis education, acquired skills, and their relevance to the job market in the 21st century.
He noted that with the caliber of the stakeholders and policymakers in education who were gathered at the conference, there was no doubt that the direct application of workable recommendations and solutions to panels and plenary sessions of the conference for the next three days.
He acknowledged the contributions FLEXISAF, a giant IT firm toward the success of the conference and its support, which he noted underscored the premium focus of the organisers on digitalsing education as well as its presence at the conference to offer support and services to as many as would require such at the conference.
Speaking about the rationale for putting up the conference, the chairman, Local Organising Committee (LOC) of the maiden biennial conference, Dr Yekini said it was an endeavour towards gleaning qualitative papers for the journal of the committee of provost, as a contribution to the ongoing academic discourses such as Artificial Intelligence and the colleges of education dual-mode system, among other education issues.
He added that with the maiden edition of the conference, “We hope to institute a biennial culture of contributing to acknowledgement and capacity building with our multidisciplinary approach to research.”
He lauded the committee of provosts, academic researchers, and other dignitaries in attendance for their great turnout at the conference saying that, “the turnout of provosts of colleges of education has been massive.”
He appreciated members of the LOC as well as leadership of CPCEN for their immense support and contribution towards the success of the conference.
He listed members of the LOC to include, Dr Yekini Tokunbo of FCE, Kontagora as chairman; Dr Stella Ofordile, FCET, Umuze as secretary; Dr Tope Rufus Oziegbe, FCE Adeyemi, Ondo as member; Dr Emmanuel Nnamonu, FCE Eha-Amufu as member; Dr Gabriel Tunde, FCET Gombe, member; and Dr Moses Osai, Delta State COE, Mosogar also as member of the committee.
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