Using a targeted tutoring chatbot to aid fundamental literacy and numeracy skills

The purpose of this grant is to enable the designing and developing of a text message chatbot to engage Filipino students in grades 3-5 and their caregivers in personalized tutoring dialogues to help students learn basic numeracy operations. The chatbot will be designed to assess student learning levels, engage in interactive tutoring dialogues to mimic phone call tutoring, weekly reassess student learning levels and adjust levels accordingly, and conduct end-line assessments to gauge learning gains. The messages will be directed toward students, but with this age demographic, it will be imperative to involve parents in the learning activities; parents must be involved since the students will most likely be using their phones and reading, or understanding, the content of the messages may be too difficult for many students. Ultimately, the goal of this intervention will be to see if the effects achieved through dialogue-oriented text messages with a chatbot can surpass those of traditional text message nudges. Similarly, can the learning gains through the chatbot tutoring intervention match those achieved by tutoring phone calls in the Philippines (Angrist et al., 2023)? Another important consideration will be how each delivery method compares in costs. Lastly, since there is evidence of text message and phone call tutoring effects on learning gains, this evaluation will probably not include text or phone call treatment arms. Instead, it will rely on obtaining comparable samples to Angrist et al., 2023 and using a pure control group.