Understanding the Longitudinal Impact of a Chatbot to Facilitate a Virtual Community of Practice for Teachers in Rural Côte d?Ivoire

Abstract

Communities of practice can improve teachers’ professional development through informal in-person discussions among community members. However, infrastructural challenges pose difficulties in fostering in-person connections, particularly in rural communities in the Global South. The emergence of social media and chatbots has presented an avenue for creating virtual communities for teachers, especially those in rural areas. An unanswered question is the potential impact of a chatbot-supported virtual teacher community on teachers’ professional development. To answer this question, we conducted a longitudinal quasi-experiment involving 313 teachers participating in a new training program in rural Côte d’Ivoire by deploying a chatbot on Facebook Messenger. Our experiment had two chatbot versions for two regions, i.e., one version supporting virtual community and one control. Our findings indicate that teachers in the virtual community condition exhibited modest enhancements in motivation and knowledge indicators. We make a case for implementing virtual communities of practice facilitated by chatbots to bolster the professional development of teachers in rural African contexts.