Chatbot outreach increased supplemental instruction tutoring attendance by about two percentage points, mediating a small share of the grade effect¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr3·q3
Currency · newest study 2026 · checked against its sources 2026-10-22 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i? Across courses, treated students were about two percentage points more likely to attend supplemental instruction tutoring, with a natural indirect effect on final grades of about 0.32 grade points (17.8% of the total effect). → Meyer 2026
Evidence¶
Meyer 2026¶
Meyer, Katharine, Lindsay C. Page, Catherine Mata, Eric N. Smith, B. Tyler Walsh, C. Lindsey Fifield, Michelle Tyson, Amy Eremionkhale, Michael Evans, Shelby Frost, and Eye Eoun Jung. (2026). Let's Chat: Leveraging Chatbot Outreach for Improved Course Performance (NBER Working Paper No. 35397). National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w35397. Also released as EdWorkingPaper 22-564, Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://edworkingpapers.com/ai22-564
q3 · i? · causal · r3
ITT analysis of tutoring attendance from the pooled RCT sample, with formal mediation analysis. The natural indirect effect of tutoring on final numeric grades was about 0.32 grade points (p=0.041; 17.8% of the total effect) and 0.004 percentage points on earning a B or higher (p=0.046, 9.6%).
"across courses, students assigned to treatment are about two percentage points more likely to attend SI (Table 7). These effect sizes are large in relative terms compared to low baseline rates of SI attendance – 7% of students in Government and 2.4% of students in Microeconomics."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Chatbot outreach showed suggestive effects on assignment completion in Microeconomics but no effects on assignments in Government — related
- Course completion effects differed by subject: reduced DFW in Government and reduced dropping in Microeconomics — related
- Academic chatbot outreach increased the likelihood students earned an A or B by four percentage points across two large online undergraduate courses — related
- Women assigned to the chatbot in Microeconomics earned final grades seven points higher than control women, with no treatment effects for men — related
- Chatbot treatment effects on final grades were statistically significant between the 35th and 75th quantiles of the course grade distribution and at the 95th — related
- Seeking tutoring and attending supplemental instruction sessions are associated with significantly higher academic engagement
- End-of-course survey respondents strongly recommended the chatbot, but attitudinal outcomes showed no consistent treatment effects and survey participation was differentially selective — related
- Chatbot outreach produced no spillover effects on other-course performance or medium-term effects on subsequent enrollment — related
- Offering Supplemental Instruction raises first-year students' course grades (d = 0.26) in a randomized field experiment — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
chatbot-increases-tutoring-attendance |
title |
Chatbot outreach increased supplemental instruction tutoring attendance by about two percentage points, mediating a small share of the grade effect |
description |
Chatbot outreach increased supplemental instruction tutoring attendance by about two percentage points, mediating a small share of the grade effect |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2026 |
source_checked |
2026-10-22 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-10 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — meyer-2026 |
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