Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools for Assessing Students' Acquisition Skill of Agricultural Technology Techniques Recipe for Curbing Food Crisis in Rural Areas in Ebonyi State

Abstract

The study investigated measures for promoting functional agricultural technology education to enhance human capacity building with the primary aim of curbing food crises in Ebonyi State. This becomes necessary since the poverty index of the rural people is on the increase annually. A survey research design was adopted to sample the opinions of the respondents. The study focused on the roles of technology education in manpower development, problems of technological education, measures for promoting functional technology education and education imperatives for empowering farmers and would-be framers in ensuring food security in rural areas of Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Four research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The entire 64 teachers in two technical colleges in Ebonyi State were used in this study because the size was small.  A 45-item questionnaire was constructed by the researcher and used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts, and the reliability index of 0.86 was determined using the Cronbach alpha method. The data collected were analysed using mean statistics with standard deviation to answer research questions, whereas ANOVA was used to test the null hypothesis at a 0.05% probability level. The result of the study revealed that agricultural technology education plays a leading role in human capacity building in the rural area of Ebonyi State, and the provision of resources constitutes a roadblock for functional agricultural technology education for manpower development. It was concluded that there was no significant difference between the mean responses of the agricultural science teachers in the two technical colleges on the areas investigated. Implications and recommendations were based on the findings of the study.