Utilization of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Professional Development for Academic Staff Performance in Public Universities in Rivers State, Nigeria

This study investigated the utilization of artificial intelligence tools in professional development for academic staff performance in public universities in Rivers State. Three objectives and three research questions guided the study. A descriptive research design was used for the study. A population of 4420 lecturers from the three Public Universities in Rivers State were used for the study. Taro Yamane formula was used to determine the sample size as 367 lecturers and proportionate stratified sampling technique was used as sampling technique.  The instrument for data collection was a self-developed questionnaire titled “Utilization of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Professional Development for Academic Staff Performance Questionnaire". Three experts in the Department of Educational Management and Measurement and Evaluation, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt validated the instrument for face and content validity. Reliability index of 0.70, 0.78 and 0.86 were obtained using the Cronbach Alpha method. The research questions were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The findings of the study revealed that academic staff utilizes artificial intelligence tools such as grammarly helps to improve the clarity of academic writing, grammarly assists in structuring research papers effectively, and grammarly enhances the grammatical accuracy of publications. The findings showed that QuillBot provides alternative ways to express ideas, making research writing more engaging, the paraphrasing feature of QuillBot enhances academic staff's ability to restate ideas effectively. The findings revealed that ChatGPT contributes to academic staff continuous learning and professional growth. Based on the findings of the study, recommendations were made among others that school administrators should Integrate AI-powered simulations and virtual labs for experiential learning in professional development