Adopting Virtual Assistants in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions: Benefits and Challenges.

Abstract

Smart campus allows educational institutions at tertiary level to make sound decisions that will enable them to maximize resources and improve security. The development of smart campuses is aided by some basic infrastructures such as 5G, IoT, cloud computing, AI, as well as big data analytics. Virtual Assistant (VA) and e-learning, were rapidly adopted into educational processes to reduce the need for physical contacts due to covid-19. enhance effective learning and teaching. VA has proven to be a very useful tool for effective teaching and learning in educational institutions. In this article, the roles, benefits and challenges of adopting virtual assistants in higher education institutions in Nigeria. Specific task that needed to be virtualized are also highlighted. The findings show that VA can be used to automate Level Advising for students, some exams exam officer’s duties, some task performed by head of departments, academic and transcript office task, postgraduate school task and alumni relations tasks. It is also determined that VA have the potential to reduce the running costs of higher education institutions, improve teaching and learning, and reduce staff workloads. However, to achieve this goal, infrastructure such as the internet, electricity and cloud services must be improved.