DIGITAL LITERACY SKILLS AND USE OF AI WRITING TOOLS AMONG LIS UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN OYO STATE, NIGERIA

The rapid evolution of AI has presented tremendous opportunities to students, particularly undergraduates in their various academic needs, most especially in checking grammar, summarisation, paraphrasing, writing essays, and generating ideas. However, there are concerns about students' excessive use of AI-generated answers without the ability to critically assess their correctness, originality, or relevance, which could impact independent learning, critical thinking, and academic integrity among some students. Therefore, the study investigated digital literacy skills and use of AI tools among the Library and Information Science undergraduate students in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design of the correlational type and the population of the study comprised all LIS undergraduates in universities offering LIS in Oyo State. The convenient sampling method was used to select three out of the five universities offering LIS, including Ajayi Crowther University, Emmanuel Alayande University of Education, and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, with a total population of 389. The Krejcie and Morgan 1970 sample size table was used to determine a sample size of 196. Nevertheless, to increase the reliability of the findings, 220 copies of the questionnaire were administered. Eventually, 208 valid responses were returned and used for analysis with SPSS. The results showed that most respondents' digital literacy skills were moderately high; most respondents used AI writing tools for various academic tasks, particularly in checking grammar, summarisation, paraphrasing, writing essays, and generating ideas. Findings indicated a positive and statistical correlation between digital literacy skills and use of AI writing tools among the respondents. Hence, it is recommended that digital literacy should be a part of the LIS course curriculum to keep abreast of technological integration in higher educational system.