Do AI chatbots improve students learning outcomes? Evidence from a meta-analysis

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Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are gaining increasing popularity in education. The proliferation of experimental studies has highlighted the need to summarize and synthesize the inconsistent findings about the effects of AI chatbots on students' learning outcomes. The present study performed a meta-analysis of 24 randomized studies. The main goal was to meta-analytically examine the effects of AI chatbots on students' learning outcomes and the moderating effects of educational levels and intervention duration. The results indicated that AI chatbots had a large effect on students' learning outcomes. Moreover, AI chatbots had a greater effect on students in higher education, compared to those in primary and secondary education. In addition, short interventions were found to have a stronger effect than long interventions: the novelty effect of AI chatbots could improve learning outcomes in short interventions, but it wears off in the long ones. Future designers and educators should attempt to increase students' learning outcomes by equipping AI chatbots with human-like avatars, gamification elements and emotional intelligence.