Effect Of Ai-Enhanced Discussion Strategy On Students' Interest In Prose Fiction In Senior Secondary Schools In Ebonyi State, Nigeria

The study examined the effect of AI-Enhanced Discussion Strategy on Students' Interest in Prose Fiction in Senior Secondary Schools in Ebonyi State. Three purposes, research questions, and hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test, nonequivalent control group research design. The population of the study was 8241Senior Secondary II (SSII) Students in the two hundred and twenty-one (221) Senior Secondary Schools in Ebonyi State (3567 Male and 4674 Female students). A multistage sampling procedure was used to draw a sample size of 164 SS II students from intact classes of two coeducational schools (87 males and 77 females). The instrument used for data collection was the Prose Fiction Interest Scale (PFIS). The instrument was face-validated by three experts and tested for reliability, which yielded the KR-20 reliability coefficient of 0.91. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions. The findings of the research questions revealed that Students taught with the AI-Enhanced Discussion Strategy have higher interest in prose fiction than those taught with the conventional approach. Female students taught prose fiction with the AI-Enhanced Discussion Strategy have higher interest in prose fiction than male students taught prose fiction with the same approach. There is no interaction between method and gender on students' mean interest in prose fiction. The hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), and the findings revealed that there is a significant difference in the mean interest score in Prose Fiction of Senior Secondary Schools students taught with the AI-Enhanced Discussion Strategy and those taught with the conventional Teaching Method; there is no significant difference in the interest mean score in Prose Fiction of male and female Senior Secondary Schools students taught with the AIEnhanced Discussion Strategy; there is a significant difference in the interaction effect of method and gender on Senior Secondary Schools students' mean interest score in prose fiction. It was recommended that teachers of Literature-in-English should adopt the AI-Enhanced Discussion Strategy in teaching prose fiction, to improve students' interest in prose fiction.