Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab Introduces Mobile App to Spur Quality Parent-Child Conversation

Chicago, IL, April 9, 2025 – The University of Chicago Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab (BIP Lab) announced the launch of its mobile app, Chat2Learn, an award-winning, evidence-based messaging program for caregivers of 3-to-6-year-old children that guides engaging and effective adult-child conversations.

“Parents and children alike are busier than ever. Finding the time to interact meaningfully with our children can be a challenge, even though it’s crucial for their cognitive and social-emotional development,” says Ariel Kalil, BIP Lab co-director and Daniel Levin Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “Designed and informed by rigorous academic research, Chat2Learn empowers parents to transform everyday small talk into meaningful moments of curiosity and learning,”

The app from the BIP Lab is now available in English and Spanish by mobile app, SMS, and WhatsApp, and includes an AI-powered chatbot named Chatty who guides parent-child conversations with personalized prompts and illustrations.

Chat2Learn offers open-ended questions for parents to ask their children that go beyond the mundane – questions that encourage children to think big and creatively, to tell stories, recall memories, form opinions, solve problems, and ask questions. Interactive prompts with illustrations are tailored to each child's developmental level. Parents can share their child’s response to prompts with Chatty, and in turn, Chatty suggests natural follow-up prompts with new images to help enrich the conversation.

Now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, Chat2Learn is "relational technology” that augments, rather than replaces human connections. Research shows conversation is powerful for actively engaging children in building language, literacy, and social-emotional skills.

The Robert R. McCormick Foundation and MIT Solve have funded the Chat2Learn initiative. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT funded the BIP Lab to evaluate the effectiveness of the AI-powered program on parent-child language interactions.

“By promoting ‘small talk that makes a big difference’, Chat2Learn helps to deepen parent-child discussion and enhance child engagement and parent agency,” says BIP Lab Executive Director Michelle Michelini. “Over time, Chat2Learn reinforces caregiver habits of regular, two-way conversations that are engaging and effective for children’s skill development.”

Chat2Learn has been developed with insights from extensive research conducted with 500+ partner institutions and 20,000+ families in diverse communities across the US. Results from the beta (static, pre-AI) version of the Chat2Learn program achieved promising results in boosting children's vocabulary and parents’ agency for supporting their children’s learning.

US enrollment is open and free for families with 3-to-6-year-old children across the country. Families can download the mobile app or sign up for the SMS-based program at www.biplab.uchicago.edu/chat2learn/sign-up if preferred. The BIP Lab welcomes school and institutional partnerships to enroll all eligible families in Chat2Learn. And, aiming to expand the effort internationally, the BIP Lab is collaborating with Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer and the Development Innovation Lab (DIL) at the University of Chicago to launch and evaluate a the program delivered by WhatsApp in Peru. This evaluation is made possible through an official partnership between the two University of Chicago research labs and the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS) in Peru.

"We are excited about partnering with the BIP Lab and building on our existing partnerships in Peru to evaluate the impact of this innovative program to support parental engagement in young children’s development,” says Michael Kremer, DIL Director and University Professor at the University of Chicago, Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics.

The BIP Lab received accelerator program and funding support for Chat2Learn research and development from MIT Solve and the Gates Foundation as a winner of their 2024 AI-Embedded Assessment Challenge. The BIP Lab collaborated with the Chicago-based technical team at MJ Ventures to design and build the Chat2Learn app.

For more information about Chat2Learn, visit www.biplab.uchicago.edu/chat2learn or contact the BIP Lab at biplab@uchicago.edu.

About the BIP Lab

The BIP Lab studies the science of parental decision-making through the lens of behavioral science. Research shows that a variety of behavioral supports can optimize the decisions that people make. The BIP Lab is dedicated to understanding how such behavioral supports can be used to influence parental investments that promote children’s development, especially in low-income families. The lab was co-founded in 2014 by University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Professors Ariel Kalil and Susan Mayer.