Awareness about Artificial intelligence tools among academicians in higher education

© 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b247 Awareness about Artificial intelligence tools among academicians in higher education Shabnum Perween, Research Scholar, School of Education and Training, MANUU Hyderabad. [email protected] Prof. Mushtaq Ahmed I. Patel, Professor of Education, DDE, MANUU, Hyderabad. [email protected] Abstract: This study aims to examine the level of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, AI usage and negative attitude towards AI among faculty members of social science stream of higher education in India. Descriptive survey method is found to be suitable for conducting the research as it is conducted in the current scenario. For the measurement of AI usage, scale was self-constructed based on the usage model of Burton-Jones (2005). Research objective and hypothesis were designed to examine the relationship between AI literacy, AI usage, and negative attitude towards AI. In the view of objectives, the statistical techniques used for this study was percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and correlation. Findings of the study revealed that a greater number of faculty members have high level of AI literacy and average level of AI usage in their daily life. Furthermore, result also revealed positive relation between AI literacy and AI usage whereas, AI usage and AI literacy have very low correlation with negative attitude towards AI. This study is effective for the policy makers, curriculum planners, curriculum evaluators, and teacher training institutions to guide the education system accordingly, so that the faculty members of social science stream can use and apply AI in their teaching learning process as well as in research field. Keywords: Artificial intelligence (AI), AI literacy, AI tools, AI Usage, negative attitude, Introduction: Artificial intelligence comprises of two words i.e., artificial & intelligence. According to Collins dictionary the word ‘artificial’ means - produced by human kind/ made an imitation of a natural product. The later word ‘intelligence’ was defined by David Waschler as “the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment”. So, the AI can be defined as to develop intelligence artificially by imitating the brain functions or thinking process of human being. John MC Cathe first used the term artificial intelligence during the Dartmath conference in 1956. Artificial intelligence is an achievement after doing multiple tasks on machine learning. It (AI) is to train a machine or specifically to work as humans, in 1980 the data scientists started to try to imitate brain function and structure to build intelligence artificially. scientist break large information into small parts and encode all [information] to make machines intelligent. AI is relevant © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b248 to any cognitive tasks and it impacts all the fields so it is considered as the universal field. There are few definitions of artificial intelligence (AI) as discussed below, “The exciting new effort to make computers think. machines with minds, in the full and literal sense”. “[The automation of] activities that we associate with human thinking, activities such as decision-making, problem solving, learning”. “The study of mental faculties through the use of computational models.”(Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, n.d.) “The study of the computations that make it possible to perceive, reason, and act.”(Patrick Henry Winston, Artificial Intelligence, n.d.). “The art of creating machines that perform functions that require intelligence when performed by people.” “The study of how to make computers do things at which, at the moment, people are better.” “Computational Intelligence is the study of the design of intelligent agents.”(Poole et al., 1998) “AI ...is concerned with intelligent behaviour in artifacts.” (Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis - Nils J. Nilsson - Google Books, n.d.). From the different definitions given by experts it can be concluded that artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science which deals with the designing of machines or computers in such a way that it can respond rationally as well as humanly and act rationally as well as humanly (Artificial Intelligence - a Modern Approach (3rd, 2009), n.d.). Respond rationally refers to give logical output that follow the inductive reasoning (specific to general, given by Aristotle), act rationally refers to such response from which the interrogator can’t discriminate between the written answers whether it is by machines/ computers or humans; act humanly includes linguistic processing (successful in English), to store facts and draw new conclusion, adopt new circumstances and respond accordingly; act rationally refers to perform autonomously after analysing the situation (Artificial Intelligence - a Modern Approach (3rd, 2009), n.d.). A responsible AI includes human centricity, fairness, privacy and adaptability (Artificial Intelligence - a Modern Approach (3rd, 2009), n.d.). “Humans can only communicate with humans” this idea is rejected with the advancement of technology specifically with the artificial intelligence, AI provides an opportunity to humans to talk to machines or computers (Yi, 2021). All the basic skills / abilities which are necessary to acquire in this AI era to learn functional, social and technical literacy to become a subjective citizen comes under artificial intelligence literacy (Yi, 2021). AI literacy can also be defined as an individual ability to critically evaluate, use, create AI and AI ethics (Yi, 2021). AI literacy has four aspects i.e., know and understand AI that includes understanding of all the basic concepts, skill or capabilities knowledge of AI; second aspect is applying AI which is related to the application of AI in different scenario or context; third aspect is create and evaluate AI; which involves the critical evaluation of AI content and communication and collaboration with the AI; AI ethics is the last aspect which is human centricity concerned about the fairness, accountability and transparency (Ng et al., 2021). The ability or competency to complete a task with the use of AI tools refers to as AI usage (Wang et al., 2023) . AI literacy is strongly and positively correlated with the AI usage whereas AI usage is significantly and negatively correlated with the negative attitude of robot scale (NARS)(Wang et al., 2023). Negative attitude towards AI is also found within the society which cause the digital divide, power distance index (PDI) is considered as one of the factors of it (Sumanth, n.d.). The rapid development in AI based technology in day to day lives lead to educating the people of the country about artificial intelligence AI (Casal-Otero et al., 2023). The current study covers the following three questions; 1. What is the level of AI literacy, usage and negative attitude towards AI tools? 2. What is the difference between © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b249 the mean score of male and female members on AI literacy, AI usage and negative attitude towards AI? 3. Is there any relationship exists between AI literacy, usage and attitude? Rationale of the study: Higher education plays an important and leading role in nation building as well as economic growth of the country. Artificial intelligence has now become universal subject as it is connected with all the fields. So, it is important to know the current status of awareness, literacy and negative attitude with regard to Artificial Intelligence tools. Also, the correlation will elaborate the relation between usage, literacy and attitude towards artificial intelligence tools. There is no doubt that the artificial intelligence tools have capacity to help and enhance the productivity if used wisely. It can help the academicians/educators to conduct research smoothly and present their own ideas more powerfully. This process and its product will directly or indirectly boost their confidence, personality and learning style. Objectives of the study: 1. To study the AI literacy, AI usage and negative attitude towards the artificial intelligence tools. 2. To find out the difference between male and female members on AI literacy, AI usage and negative attitude towards the artificial intelligence. 3. To find out the correlation between AI usage and AI literacy. 4. To find out the correlation between AI usage and negative attitude towards AI. 5. To find out the correlation between AI literacy and negative attitude towards AI. Hypothesis of the study: 1. There is no significant difference between male and female on AI literacy, usage and negative attitude towards the artificial intelligence tools. 2. There is no correlation between AI usage and AI literacy. 3. There is no correlation between AI usage and negative attitude towards AI. 4. There is no correlation between AI literacy and negative attitude towards AI. Method of conducting study: Descriptive survey method is found to be suitable for conducting the research as it is conducted in the current scenario with the help of questionnaire. Population: In the present study all the faculty members of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, India (head quarter as well as off campuses) associated with the social sciences stream were the population of the study. Sampling technique: As the sampling frame was not available and it was not possible to visit all the off campuses of MANUU, the non-probability and convenient sampling technique was used. Sample: Sample of the study was 97 teacher educators (assistant professor, associate professor and professor). Sample included both the male (64%) and female (36%) respondents. © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b250 Measurement: Three tools were used by the investigators to check the Usage, AI literacy and negative attitude towards artificial intelligence platforms. All the scale were on seven-point Likert scale i.e., strongly agree (SA), moderately agree (MA), slightly agree (Sl. A), neutral (N), slightly disagree (Sl. D), moderately disagree (MD) and strongly disagree (SD). Scale used for the measurement of AI usage was self-constructed based on the idea proposed by Burton-Jones (2005), (Burton-Jones & Andrew, 2005) which consists of seven items has the reliability .74 , AI literacy scale consists of 12 items adopted from Wang et al. (2023) (Wang et al., 2023) has the reliability coefficient .79 and the scale used for the measurement of negative attitude towards AI was adopted and slightly modified which was originally developed by Nomura et al. (Nomura et al., 2006). Likert point Scoring Positive items Negative items Strongly agree (SA) 7 1 Moderately agree (MA) 6 2 Slightly agree (Sl.A) 5 3 Neutral (N), 4 4 Slightly disagree (Sl.D) 3 5 Moderately disagree (MD) 2 6 Strongly disagree (SD) 1 7 Face validity and content validity of the scale was found by expert opinion and the reliability of the tool was found by Cronbach alpha. Procedure of data collection: The questionnaire was designed in two formats, initially it was developed in the form of google form and shared it through WhatsApp groups of university teachers & teacher educators with the help and permission of Heads and Deans of the departments and principles of off campus colleges. Later, the questionnaire was also get printed in the form of hard copy and distributed among respondents. At total 97 responses were collected both from the offline and online format. After this, the next stage was data analysis by applying different statistical techniques. Statistical techniques used: In the view of objectives the statistical techniques used for this study was percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and Pearson product moment correlation. Data analysis: The collected data was analysed with the help of Excel as per the objectives, Objective 1: To study the AI literacy, AI usage and negative attitude towards the artificial intelligence (AI) tools. 0 10 20 30 40 50 Low Average High AI literacy © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b251 Data revealed that 15%, 41% and 44% of the faculty members of higher education institution have low, moderate and high level of AI literacy respectively. Data revealed that 27%, 45% and 28% of faculty members of higher education institution have low, moderate and high level of AI usage respectively in their daily life. Data revealed that 41%, 31% and 28% of members of higher education institutions have low, moderate and high level of negative attitude towards AI platforms. Objective 2: The objective was to find out the difference between male and female faculty members on AI usage, AI literacy and negative attitude towards the artificial intelligence. Digital literacy and artificial intelligence Gender N df Mean SD t-value Level of sig. Male 63 95 124.41 46.166 -3.206 0.05 female 34 95 152.00 24.318 From the above table it is clear that the calculated value (3.206) is greater than the table value, thus the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference between male and female faculty members on AI usage, AI literacy and negative attitude towards the artificial intelligence is rejected. Further the mean score of females is 152.00 which is significantly higher than that of male whose mean score of Digital literacy and artificial intelligence is 124.41. therefore, female respondents were found to be more digitally literate. 0 10 20 30 40 50 Low Average High AI usage 0 10 20 30 40 50 Low Average High Negative attitude © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b252 Objective 3: The objective was to study the correlation between AI usage and AI literacy among faculty members. The data were analysed with the help of product moment correlation and the results are presented in the table below, Correlations AI Usage AI literacy AI usage Pearson Correlation 1 .856** Sig. (2-tailed) .000 N 97 97 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). From the above table it is evident that the correlation coefficient between the usage and AI literacy is .856 which is positive and significant at 0.01 level. It shows that usage and literacy in artificial intelligence tools in research were positively and significantly correlated. Thus, the null hypothesis that there is no significant correlation between AI usage and AI literacy in faculty members is rejected. Objective 4: The objective was to find out the correlation between AI usage and negative attitude towards AI among faculty members. The data were analysed with the help of product moment correlation and the result are shown in table below, Correlations AI Usage Negative attitude towards AI AI usage Pearson Correlation 1 .601** Sig. (2-tailed) .000 N 97 97 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). From the above table it is evident that the correlation coefficient between the AI usage and negative attitude towards AI is .601 which is positive and significant at 0.01 level with the degree of freedom = 95. It shows that usage and negative attitude in Artificial intelligence tools has positive and significant but low correlation in the study. Thus, the null hypothesis that there is no significant correlation between AI usage and negative attitude towards AI in faculty members is rejected. Objective 5: The objective was to find out the correlation between AI literacy and negative attitude towards AI among faculty members. The data were analysed with the help of product moment correlation and the results are presented in table below, Correlations Negative attitude literacy Negative attitude towards AI Pearson Correlation 1 .567** Sig. (2-tailed) .000 N 97 97 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b253 From the above table it is evident that the correlation coefficient between the negative attitude and literacy is .567 which is positive and significant at 0.01 level. It shows that negative attitude towards AI and AI literacy in research has positive and significant but low correlation. Thus, the null hypothesis that there is no significant correlation between negative attitude and literacy in faculty members is rejected. Discussion: Average number of people use AI tools fluently; very small number of people have the high level of AI literacy and most of the people have the negative attitude towards AI tools. Result also reveal that female teachers use more artificial intelligence tools in their research more than the male faculty members, also a very interesting finding is that the female has more negative attitude towards AI tools instead of using more AI tools. Finding also revealed that the usage and literacy for AI tools have strong relationship. But, negative attitude towards AI tools has very low relation with the usage and literacy. So here it can be concluded that by improving literacy the usage can be improve as well as it will also helpful for changing the attitude of people towards AI tools used for research. Educational implication: There is a need to create awareness among faculty members about the AI tools usage. This is possible through the refresher courses organised for the specific purpose by NCTE or any other agency. Then it will possible to improve the skills which develop the interest to explore the AI tools for their research purpose. As they become more and more literate or educate, they not only use AI tools but also evaluate and change their attitude towards it. Limitations and suggestion for further studies: One of the major limitations of the study is the population i.e., only social sciences faculty members of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, India were considered. The second limitation is sample, although it was enough to analyse but, it was limited number and convenient sampling technique was used hence, generalization of result for the whole country India is not possible. The third limitation of the study was to administer the previously designed scale for the measurement of AI literacy and AI negative attitude which has not been standardise in the Indian context. The fourth limitation of the study was, collection of only quantitative data, there were no qualitative data used and also the Triangulation of data was not been done. The fifth limitation of the study is that the analysis is limited to percentage, t-test and correlation only, the factors which influence the AI literacy, AI usage and negative attitude has not been studied. Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my research supervisor Prof. Mushtaq Ahmed I. Patel for his valuable guidance and feedback. I would also like to thank all the faculty members of MANUU, Hyderabad (head quarter and off campuses) for the cooperation in the form of filling data in spite of their busy schedule. I am grateful to my parents and family members for the constant support. Conclusion: As the AI is changing & growing rapidly, now the society is changing its nature from digital society to artificially intelligent society. So, it is important to the stake holders to update in the field that they can improve the educational status of the country by self-improvement as well as transferring the knowledge to the coming generation. NEP 2020 envisage that the disruptive technologies are going to usage landscape of education which couldn’t be envisage during 1986 policy. © 2025 JETIR November 2025, Volume 12, Issue 11 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) JETIR2511130 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org b254 References: (4) (PDF) Artificial intelligence: The very idea: J. Haugeland, (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985); 287 pp. (n.d.). Retrieved January 2, 2024, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256121747_Artificial_intelligence_The_very_idea_J_Haugeland_MIT_Pr ess_Cambridge_MA_1985_287_pp artificial intelligence - a modern approach (3rd, 2009). (n.d.). Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis - Nils J. Nilsson - Google Books. (n.d.). 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