A total of 931 staff of Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education have graduated from an intensive 13-week training on the use of Artificial Intelligence to support their teaching, research and community engagement.
The training programme with anticipated support from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), was organised by the National Universities Commission (NUC), the 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).
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Speaking to newsmen at the end of the graduation ceremony, professor emeritus Peter Okebukola, who is the director/facilitator-general of the Virtual Institute for Capacity Building in Higher Education (VICBHE), through which the training was delivered, said, “During the 13 weeks of training, we covered key concepts in AI and had 11 practical sessions.”.
He added that the participants could now practically use AI tools to support their teaching, research and community engagement.
According to him, “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.”
Okebukola, who was the immediate past chairman of the governing board of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), said that he was delighted that the end-of-course project which all the participants undertook was on the development of AI policies for their institutions.
He said, “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.”
The participants 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 departments, professors, chief lecturers, and senior management staff of higher education institutions in Nigeria.
A former minister of education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, who was the chairman of the ceremony, and the keynote speaker, Sir John Daniel, former assistant director-general for education of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and former vice chancellor of the Open University of the United Kingdom (UK), all lauded the training.
On the performance of the participants, Okebukola disclosed that a total of 156 earned distinction plus certificates, 457 had distinction, 74 with credit, 131 merit and 113 with pass certificate.