Artificial Intelligence Technologies for Instructional Delivery: Lecturers’ Awareness of Utilization in Colleges of Education in North Central, Nigeria

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, such as intelligent tutoring systems, automated grading tools, virtual assistants, adaptive learning platforms, and generative AI, offer the potential to enhance instructional delivery, personalize learning experiences, and improve teaching efficiency. As AI becomes more and more integrated into educational systems, there is an increasing need to evaluate lecturers' awareness of using these technologies, particularly in Nigerian teacher-training institutions. The study specifically examined the level of AI technology awareness among lecturers, the influence of gender on awareness, and the influence of teaching experience on awareness. The study design used was a descriptive survey. Lecturers from North Central Nigeria's 21 Colleges of Education made up the population. The study employed proportionate stratified random sampling to choose a sample of 416 lecturers from particular colleges of education. The Lecturers' Awareness of AI in Instructional Delivery Questionnaire (LAAIID), a validated questionnaire, was used to gather data. The test had a reliability coefficient of 0.91 using Cronbach's alpha and comprised 30 items organised on a four-point awareness scale. The research questions were addressed using the mean and standard deviation, and the hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance using the independent-samples t test and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). With a grand mean of 2.71, the results showed that lecturers were generally aware of AI technologies for instructional delivery. Awareness was higher for regularly used programs such as Grammarly, Google Classroom, Smartboards, Turnitin, SPSS, Google Scholar, Scopus, Mendeley, and ResearchGate, while awareness of specialised AI tools was very low. Male lecturers reported more awareness than female lecturers, t(414) = 3.47, p = 0.001, indicating that gender had a significant influence on awareness. Additionally, teaching experience had a substantial influence on awareness (F (2,413) = 18.09, p < 0.05), with moderately experienced lecturers having the highest awareness. The study found that while lecturers' knowledge of AI is encouraging, it still needs to be improved through institutional support, training, infrastructure provision, and inclusive professional development.