Teachers’ attitudes towards chatbots in education: a technology acceptance model approach considering the effect of social language, bot proactiveness, and users’ characteristics

Educational Studies

The appearance of Artificial Intelligence implementations, such as text-based virtual assistants (chatbots) in education is relatively new. These implementations can be useful for helping teachers and students to solve both educational questions and routine tasks. This paper examines the factors that explain teachers’ acceptance of chatbots through the dimensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use), its conversational design (use of social language and proactiveness), and the teachers’ age and digital skills. The data collection process included a pre-test and an online survey with four different types of chatbots. We analyse 225 responses of primary and secondary education teachers. The results show that the perceived easiness and perceived usefulness leads to greater acceptance of chatbots. As for the chatbots’ features, formal language by a chatbot leads to a higher intention of using them. These results can help in chatbot design and communication decisions, improving the acceptance of the educational community.