Duolingo and Supporting Teacher Assessments 

https://doi.org/10.9743/JEO.2024.21.2.10

Abstract

Duolingo has been collecting feedback from education users for the past seven years in order to make the app useful as a classroom tool, in addition to its ongoing use in informal learning settings. To understand teachers’ experiences about Duolingo for classroom and to understand further measures recommended to strengthen the platform for classroom instruction, the purpose of this paper was to examine the research question: What are educators’ feedback on Duolingo’s school program based on a netnographic analysis of discussion boards? Netnography was used to research publicly available data concerning how educators can use the assessments in Duolingo classrooms as an instructional tool to personalize learning. The netnographic analysis found three themes among educators’ comments: (Theme 1) questions about grading, credit, and testing; (Theme 2) the use of grading rubrics; and (Theme 3) requested modifications from Duolingo for the Duolingo school program. In understanding the educators’ concerns with Duolingo for Schools, with modifications to connectivity issues and scoring guidelines, educators and students may be better prepared to learn with Duolingo in a classroom setting. With some additional improvements to Duolingo classrooms, educators may benefit from using the progress reporting in Duolingo classrooms as an assessment to support personalized learning.

Keywords: online language learning, classroom progress reports, assessments