ASSESSING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ROLE IN REPOSITIONING TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION TRAINING (TE) FOR NIGERIAN’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Technical Education (TE) serves as a critical component for fostering economic development by equipping individuals with the necessary skills to thrive in various industries. Meanwhile the rapid advancement of technology, particularly in the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI), has created a pressing need for educational systems worldwide to adapt and evolve. As the global economy increasingly relies on AI technologies, it is imperative for TE programmes to align their curricula with these advancements to equip students with relevant skills but there seems to be scarcity of studies that dwell on integration of AI in TE and there is the need to assess the role played by artificial intelligent in repositioning the programme. Therefore, this paper focused on the assessment of the role of Artificial Intelligence in reposition of Technical Education (TE) for economic development in Nigeria. To achieve the broad aim, this study identifies existing challenges, and highlights the transformative potential of integrating AI into TE. The population of the study was 300 NCE students of Kano Federal University of Education. A total enumeration sampling technique was applied because the population is of manageable size. A validated 15 items questionnaire, designed by the researcher on four point scale ranging from strongly agree (4) – Strongly Disagree (1) was used for data collection. Reliability of the instrument was ensured using split-half reliability technique which yielded a cumulative coefficient of 0.79. Data collected were analyses using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions. The findings revealed that there is need to integrate AI into the current state of TE; the major challenges and barriers that hinder AI integration in TE is unavailability of uniform content to serve the AI application and that introduction of AI into the curriculum of TE will contribute to the advancement of Nigerian economic development. There is an urgent need for substantial investment in AI-related infrastructure within TE institutions to providing access to AI tools and technologies and TE programmes should be updated to include AI-related courses and concepts.