Assessing Lecturers’ Perception of Employing and Deploying Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education and Research: Implications for Human-Driven Factors

Abstract

This study investigated Emmanuel Alayande University lecturers' perceptions of employing and deploying Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) in education and research. The research design was a case study to determine the most frequently employed Gen AI models, uses and limitations in employing and deploying Gen AI models in education and research. The lecturers' perception of Gen AI prompts and outputs, users' accessibility to Gen AI models, ethical and cultural biases, and data privacy and protection issues in employing and deploying Gen AI models were investigated. The effect of the lecturers’ gender, faculty, and level of usage were examined on the employment and deployment of Gen AI models. The research instrument was limited to a self-structured questionnaire on the level of usage, uses and issues in Gen AI using Google Forms. Eighty-nine (89) lectures from the five (5) faculties in the university completed the questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for the data analysis. The findings revealed that 77.5% of the participating lecturers utilised Gen AI models, with ChatGPT being the most frequently used. Gen AI models were employed to generate research topics, questions, hypotheses, literature reviews, create content, videos, and images. There were significant differences between the lecturers’ perceptions of employing and deploying Gen AI models by gender, Gen AI users and non-users. However, no significant differences were found between lecturers' perceptions by gender and faculty. The study recommended human responsibilities in ensuring that Gen AI outputs are not biased, do not violate users’ privacy, and dignity.