Artificial Intelligence Literacy in Malay Language Through a Teaching-Purposed Chatbot

The capacity of chatbots to mimic human interactions for activities like summarising content, responding to queries, creating quizzes, and replicating concepts is the reason why their use in education is rising. However, users need prompting skills to be able to get the maximum benefits from them. Novices and beginners in a subject require substantial self-regulated learning to explore topics and achieve their goals. Without this, they can get lost and lose motivation. While overview and conceptual prompts are available, they often lack structured knowledge support, highlighting the need for chatbots that offer basic knowledge. Despite the popularity of ChatGPT and other chatbots, we emphasise the need for purpose-built teaching chatbots. We introduce CikguAIBot, a teaching chatbot designed using an 18-item checklist for developing teaching chatbots. CikguAIBot converses in Malay and teaches artificial intelligence (AI) concepts, a pioneering effort in this field. Malay is the official language of Malaysia. The content covers AI concepts and algorithms. A two-stage evaluation is introduced in the checklist, which provides CikguAIBot evaluation pre- and post-deployment, comprising pedagogical evaluation, content verification and technology acceptance, and user studies with students. Based on comprehensive evaluations by educational experts, content and usability evaluators, and teaching trainees, CikguAIBot shows effectiveness in delivering targeted knowledge and supporting educational goals, particularly enhancing learning performance and engagement in AI topics. The scarcity of chatbots teaching AI, especially in Malay, underscores CikguAIBot’s significance.