'You Give a Little of Yourself' Family Support for Children's Use of an IVR Literacy System

Low levels of childhood literacy in global contexts may be mitigated by educational technologies, however, these technologies often rely on parents of sufficient literacy to effectively support their children. Given low levels of adult literacy in many low-resource contexts, we investigate the nature of low-literate adult support for children's use of a literacy technology designed to foster early literacy precursors. We deployed an interactive voice response (IVR) system with 38 families in a rural village in Côte d'Ivoire using the IVR for 5 weeks in their homes. Using call log data and grounded theory analyses of IVR observations and interviews, we find evidence that families leverage complex support networks where family members support children's use of the IVR in different ways, via a collective network of intermediaries. These results suggest opportunities to scaffold low-literate family supporters for educational technologies. [This paper was published in: "ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) (COMPASS '19), July 3-5, 2019, Accra, Ghana," ACM, 2019, pp. 86-98.]