Innovations in Digital Support for Education in Low-Resource Contexts: Case Studies from West Africa.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The panel brings together frontier research that explores the use of digital tools to enhance educational outcomes in West Africa. As the global education crisis deepens—where 70% of children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) fail to meet basic literacy benchmarks by the end of primary school—there is a pressing need for scalable, cost-effective interventions. Digital technologies, when thoughtfully integrated into educational systems, offer a promising solution.

This panel aims to address the challenges and potential of digital interventions in low-resource educational contexts by presenting findings from diverse studies across West Africa. Each presentation focuses on innovative approaches that harness technology to support teachers, enhance instructional quality, and incorporate community input. The first paperwill present on DIA, a human-chatbot hybrid system deployed in Côte d'Ivoire, which provides teachers with real-time, localized support to improve instruction. The second paper will dive into a study examining how DIA, implemented alongside a "Teaching at the Right Level" (TaRL) program, led to improved literacy and numeracy outcomes in a large-scale school-randomized trial. Lastly, the third presenter will present on a framework for integrating community input into digital interventions and large-scale studies, drawing on the experience of a multidisciplinary research team in West Africa.

At the heart of this panel will be the role of digital tools like DIA, a hybrid human chatbot system designed to provide on-demand instructional support to teachers. DIA serves as an example of how artificial intelligence (AI) can be leveraged to extend expert knowledge in low-resource areas, providing real-time feedback, guidance, and ongoing professional development for educators. Through teacher mentorship and continuous interaction, the platform demonstrates how digital support can address the persistent issue of teacher capacity in rural settings.

However, as the panel will explore, technological interventions are not a panacea. There are significant barriers to adoption, from infrastructural limitations to resistance from educators who view digital platforms as an additional workload. The presentations will examine the nuances of these challenges, particularly how teachers and communities perceive and interact with digital tools. Further, the panel will argue that for digital solutions to be effective at scale, they must be accompanied by a commitment to continuous teacher support, capacity-building, and policy alignment.

The panel provides valuable insights into the future of digital education in LMICs. By drawing on recent large-scale research programs that highlighted both successes and setbacks, the presentations offer a roadmap for how digital interventions can be better integrated into national education systems to help solve the global learning crisis. The session will provide policymakers, researchers, funders, and practitioners with insights and evidence for leveraging technology to promote equitable research and learning outcomes and improve teacher efficacy across diverse and challenging environments.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Samuel Kembou, Jacobs Foundation

Chair

• Amy Ogan, Carnegie Mellon University

Individual Presentations

• DIA: A Human AI Hybrid Conversational Assistant for Developing Contexts - Amy Ogan, Carnegie Mellon University

• Enhancing Targeted Instruction through Digital Support: Evidence from Côte d'Ivoire’s School-Randomized Trial - Kaja Jasińska, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

Discussant

• Noam Angrist, Youth Impact; What Works Hub for Global Education, University of Oxford