The study focused on sustaining lecturers’ academic integrity through the adoption of artificial intelligence in public Universities in Rivers State. Four research questions and four corresponding hypotheses were answered and tested in the study. Descriptive survey design was used in the study. The population of the study was 2,874 teaching staff in all the public Universities in Rivers State out of which 351 lecturers were sampled using proportionate stratified random sampling technique. Instrument used for gathering data was a 20 item questionnaire titled “Artificial Intelligence for Sustaining Lecturers Academic Integrity Questionnaire” (AISLAIQ). The questionnaire was face and content validated by an Educational Management expert at University of Port Harcourt while the reliability was estimated using Cronbach Alpha and pronounced an index of 0.82. Out of the 352 copies of questionnaire administered, 336 copies representing 95.7% were retrieved. Research questions raised were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using z-test at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study indicated career progression and lack of competence were the main drivers of academic fraud among the lecturers. The usefulness of AI and the opportunities it provides for personalized learning were among the main factors driving the adoption of AI by the lecturers. Challenges to the adoption of AI and the ways of improving the adoption of AI for sustained academic integrity were identified. The study recommended the need for further AI training for lecturers for sustained academic integrity in the Universities.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Lecturers, Universities, academic fraud, academic integrity
