Abstract:

This study aimed to analyze the acceptance of introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in Distance Education (DE) courses in Brazil. The Brazilian DE market has specific characteristics that make it an important context to investigate the use of AI. Firstly, it is predominantly shaped by private and profitable companies (Oliveira & Lima, 2022). Additionally, in recent years, the Brazilian government has actively promoted DE as a strategy to achieve their education goals by 2024, leading to the creation of new courses in this modality (Haas, Neves & Stander, 2019). These factors together indicate that the use of AI in DE courses in Brazil is a short-term trend. Therefore, understanding how teachers enrolled in DE accept AI is crucial to grasp the impact of this technology on the Brazilian educational sector, which is the largest in Latin America. To investigate this phenomenon, we primarily utilized the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which was developed by Davis (1989) and Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw (1989). In this sense, an instrument grounded in the TAM was developed to achieve the research objective. The questionnaire used in this study was divided into four parts. The first part asked respondents to indicate whether they had previously worked in institutions that utilized some kind of tools for automating academic work in the context of DE. The second part measured respondents' acceptance of general technologies. The third part presented specific statements to measure the acceptance of AI technologies. Finally, the last part collected sociodemographic and professional information about the participants. All phases of the instrument included open-ended questions aimed at providing clarification or delving deeper into specific topics. The research protocol obtained ethical approval from an independent committee dedicated to investigations involving human subjects. The final sample for the survey comprised 163 teachers working in distance learning across different regions of Brazil and areas of knowledge. The key results indicate that the teachers in the study sample have a good level of general technological acceptance and, more specifically, towards AI applied to distance learning. However, the feedback provided by these professionals through open-ended questions in the instrument revealed the limitations of the currently used technologies in the DE context. It also emphasized the importance of human interaction in the teaching-learning process in this modality. The findings of this investigation have practical implications for reevaluating educational policies, aiming to anticipate the impacts that new technological tools will generate in the sector. Additionally, there is an urgent need to train teachers in the new technologies already present in the context of online education. As with any scientific research, this investigation has limitations. Firstly, the results should be understood within the context of the sample used in this study, as different contexts may present different realities. It is also important to note that the acceptance of AI was measured using specific statements based on the literature, which may impact the results. Different approaches could yield alternative perspectives.

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence, Distance Education, Technology Acceptance Model.