Assessing Awareness and Engagement with Artificial Intelligence Tools: Enhancing Academic Performance among Secondary School Students in the Awka Educational Zone.

Abstract

This study investigated the awareness and engagement of secondary school students in the Awka
Educational Zone with artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Prompted by increasing calls for the
integration of AI into educational settings, the study specifically aimed to assess how aware and
engaged students are with AI tools that can potentially improve their academic outcomes. The study
was guided by three research questions and one null hypothesis was tested. Study population was
5,010 Senior Secondary Two (SS2) students from 54 government-owned schools, from which 350
were selected using a multistage sampling procedure. Data were collected through a 25-item,
researchers-developed questionnaire titled “Awareness and Engagement with Artificial Intelligence
Tools for Enhancing Academic Performance Questionnaire (AEAITEAPQ)” validated by three
experts from the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, and found to be reliable
with coefficient value of 0.80 using Cronbach alpha statistics. Means and standard deviation were
used to answer research questions, while inferential statistics of two-sample z- test was used to test
the null hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings reveals moderate level of awareness of AI
tools, with commonly used tools including AI chatbots. On the other hand, students engagement
with AI tools for academic purposes shows great extent engagement. In addition, factors such as
parents, teachers, instant response, friends, access to devices among others influenced their
engagement with AI tools. Result of the hypothesis shows that there is no significant difference
between males and females among secondary school students in Awka Educational
zone(p=0.866 >a=0.05) ) therefore, the null hypothesis is not rejected. Based on the findings, it was
therefore recommended among others that: educational authorities should initiate more sensitization
campaigns or interactive learning program that show students how AI tools can be directly applied to
schoolwork