The Engagement of Online Spanish Course Moderators on Duolingo Discussion Boards

Tom Neuschafer, Jersey Shore Area School District 

https://doi.org/10.9743/JEO.2025.22.1.22

Abstract

Online instructors have identified several issues that must be addressed to facilitate better online learning experiences, including authentic experiential education, building community, technology for remote learning, and supporting learners. Online forums are often used by users to express their frustrations, feelings, jokes, and even group-level entertainment. As such, it is important that Duolingo provides moderators to ensure that the discussion stays on topic and is free of inappropriate content, personal attacks, spam, disrespectful content, and abusive language. The purpose of this study was to examine moderators’ responses to identify levels of engagement and support of Duolingo users within the Spanish language courses. The data gathered from the openly accessible discussions were analyzed using a netnographic analysis. Three themes explained the engagement of Spanish moderators. Spanish moderators demonstrated a higher level of language proficiency but made fewer and less detailed explanations compared to German moderators. Moderately engaged moderators struggled to manage “troll” commenters and focused on providing instrumental support. Lower engaged moderators made less detailed explanations about course content for users and had to deal with a great deal of “trolls” on the discussion boards, which was not evident on German discussion boards. While some modeling and encouragement were observed in the Spanish discussions, this practice was more evident in German discussion posts.

Keywords: online learning, discussion boards, Spanish, language learners, moderators