Staff of 931 tertiary institutions trained on use of AI – Prof Okebukola

A total of 931 staff of Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education have graduated from an intensive 13 weeks training on the use of Artificial Intelligence to support their teaching, research and community engagements.

The training programme, with support from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), was organised by the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and the West Africa Office of the Association of African Universities (AAU) under the auspices of the NUC Strategy Advisory Committee (STRADVCOM).

The Director/Facilitator-General of the Virtual Institute for Capacity Building in Higher Education (VICBHE), Professor Emeritus Peter Okebukola, at the end of the graduation ceremony, said key concepts in AI and 11 practical sessions were covered during the training.

He said the participants can now practically use AI tools to support their teaching, research and community engagement.

“They can now carry out exercises in machine learning and more importantly, use AI tools for quality assurance including accreditation. All the participants also learned ethical considerations in the use of AI,” he said.

Okebukola, who was the immediate past chairman Governing Board of NOUN, said he was delighted that the end-of-course project, which all the participants undertook was on the development of AI policies for their institutions.

“The quality of the project reports is amazing. The aggregation of these policies will lead us to draft AI policies for higher education institutions in the participating countries and under the aegis of the AAU West Africa Office, produce a draft for the Africa region for consideration by the Secretary General of AAU, Professor Olusola Oyewole, he added.

On the performance of the participants, Okebukola disclosed that a total of 156 participants earned distinction plus certificate; 457 had distinction; 74 with credit; 131 merit and 113 with pass.

Meanwhile, the participants at the training included vice-chancellors, rectors of polytechnics, provosts of Colleges of Education, Deputy Vice-Chancellors, Directors of Academic Planning, Directors of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), deans of faculty, heads of department, professors, chief lecturers and senior management staff of higher education institutions in Nigeria.