Evaluation

Since the meeting we have continued to implement Duolingo with our classes. A part-time teacher in the department has returned from a long illness, and she is also keen on using this tool, and has in fact implemented its use with her classes.

All the teachers are on board with the project. From here I see it will be necessary to monitor their use of the tool with the classes, to make sure it they don't forget to remind their students to be using it, and in fact encourage them to use some class time on it.

In one of my classes, one Year 8 student, after failing a test, was given a Duolingo target of spending at least 20 minutes a day on it. To begin with, despite being a good student, he hardly spent any time on it. After a couple of weeks he came up to me and said, "I like Duolingo now, I've decided to treat it as a game". At which point I thought "Yes, that's the point, and why it is effective", but I said, "Great, I hope you can make your target now". However, this did make me realise that some students see it as schoolwork, rather than the gamified learning experience it really is, and that it's important to get the students to see it as a game, and not work.

Meeting with team about implementing Duolingo

Members of Staff

As Head of European Languages, my team currently consists of the following:

1) the Head of the Languages Faculty (my line manager) and teacher of French (one KS3 Spanish class)

2) a Vice Principal who teaches two Spanish classes

3) a part-time French/Spanish teacher.

Meeting

We usually meet on Wednesday afternoons. Last Wednesday the agenda that we agreed upon was to talk about ICT tools that we have been finding useful. In the end, members of staff 2) and 3) (see above) could not attend the meeting, which is often the case. Therefore myself and member of staff 1) discussed using Scoop.It and Duolingo.

Outcome

We both agreed that they were highly effective tools and the key in them being effective was getting the students to use them. Member of staff 1) was so inspired by Duolingo that he resolved to use it to improve his Spanish. 

In addition we have decided to write an 'expectations' policy for our students in Years 7-11, and an adapted one for students in Years 12-13 detailing what they should be doing, both in class and out of class to be successful language learners. We added to the policy that students should be using Duolingo several times a week to improve their French or Spanish.

Post-meeting happenings

Since the meeting, the document was shared with members of staff 2) and 3). I have had positive feedback from member of staff 3), to whom I introduced the teacher dashboard function on Duolingo, and she spent class time on it, although upon setting it as homework to her students she was disappointed to find that many of them had not bothered to do it.

Where next?

From here I plan to continue using Duolingo with my classes - it seems to work well, and continue encouraging my team to use it with their classes. As part of the expectations policy I think it will be easier to reinforce that we should be using this tool with our students. I also expect the teacher dashboard function to become more useful to us teachers. At the moment we can only track what our students complete on a weekly basis, but it has been mentioned that we will be able to identify areas of strength or weakness based on question response speeds in individual students and offer tailored support.

Questions for Euro Langs Teachers

Questions for European Languages Teachers to consider regarding Duolingo:

1) Is it practical for my students? Do they have the tools to use it on a regular basis?
2) Will my students be motivated to use it?
3) If my students are not motivated to use it, is there any way I can motivate them?
4) Do I think my students' language skills will improve from using it?
5) Is it something I want to push with my class? Why/Why not?
6) How will I introduce it with my classes?
7) How will I make sure that my classes are continuing with it?

Student Survey

I conducted a student survey with the students I teach. There were 59 replies with about 75%  of those indicating that they had used Duolingo.

This question confirmed some things that I already expected. The students generally like the game element of Duolingo (20% like levelling up, and 8% like earning points). It also confirmed to me, what I had been seeing online that they don't really 'friend' each other and therefore they don't care about comparing their progress with their friends. I was surprised by the second most popular answer: "working at my own speed" and the third most popular answer: "practising all four skill areas", which show that the students have a certain maturity of thought towards their language study, which I perhaps didn't give them credit for.

As with the first question, the results were quite evenly spread, with 20% of the students wanting the option to learn lists of vocabulary,  (one of the strengths of Duolingo in my opinion is forcing the learner to produce language in sentences rather than on the single word level) and 19% thinking that the main defect of Duolingo is the lack of languages to learn. For students in Hong Kong, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are notably absent, despite a wide range of European languages. 

This question revealed that a minority of students worked on Duolingo at home, and despite the portability of this learning method (well-made apps for mobile phones and tablets) hardly any worked on this during their travel to and from home. Most of the students worked on Duolingo when given time in class to use it.

The majority of students said they would use Duolingo more if there was lesson time dedicated to this. A significant proportion also wished they had more free time at home to be able to use it. As Emma and Gemma indicated, some students don't use it, just because they aren't motivated by the goal of learning a foreign language (10% - 'If I was more interested in learning foreign languages').

Published Information on Effectiveness of Duolingo

I have been looking for information on Duolingo:

1) http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/18/duolingo-raises-20m-series-c-round-led-by-kleiner-perkins-wants-to-dominate-online-language-learning/

This article states that Duolingo has 25 million registered users and 12.5 million active users. Apple chose Duolingo as the 2014 iPhone app of the year. 

2) http://static.duolingo.com/s3/DuolingoReport_Final.pdf

This research paper is about an 8-week study carried out on learners of Spanish in the USA, learning Spanish on Duolingo. They found that the motivating factor behind studying had an effect on how well students studying, with those reporting that they were learning Spanish for travel doing the best. Other factors such as age or gender had no effect on the rate of language acquisition by means of Duolingo. They found that Duolingo was effective, especially for beginners, and that 29-46 hours of Duolingo was equivalent to the first semester of Spanish on a US university course.

3) http://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-Duolingo-in-learning-a-language

This is a forum, started by the founder of Duolingo, Luis Von Ahn, with many personal testimonials from language learners who have used it. I would like to pick out the following quotes:

"It is gamified in a way that I have found very efficient and addictive. You get "sublevels" (lessons), "worlds" (units), trophies (when you finish a unit)." 

"It is auditory - unlike a book, the iPad speaks to you. You speak back to it. You record your voice and check your pronunciation. You do it again." 

"Programs like Duolingo are a game changer - we are only seeing the beginning of what kind of impact these can have on language instruction and almost any other topic." 

"I tried Duolingo to learn Spanish and german, and I can say it worked fine. From a knowledge zero I could read easily El Pais (one of the main spanish newspapers) in 6 months for instance."

4) http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2015/01/08/duolingo-for-schools-may-change-the-edtech-market/3/

This is an article in Forbes Online about the Teacher's Dashboard feature dated 08 Jan 2015. It talks about the fact that Duolingo now has 60 million users, and compares it to Facebook in the early day: millions of users but as yet no way to make money. They mention how detailed Duolingo is in analysing data, and how well students are learning, even timing how long it takes them to answer each question. I would like to share the following quote:

Imagine what could happen when you put the power of that kind of data in the hands of a classroom teacher. “The goal is to provide a personalized learning experience that gives each student and instructor immediate feedback in the classroom,” says Luis von Ahn. “This can free up teachers’ time to concentrate on difficult concepts, answer questions, and assist students falling behind.” Now imagine what happens to education when you make that kind of technology available to teachers for free.

Gathering information from students - Interview

I interviewed two Year 11 students, who I know have used Duolingo a lot. I wanted to find out from them how other less motivated students might be motivated to use this tool. This is the entire 12 minute interview.


Record audio or upload mp3 >>

Some quotes from the interview:

"I think you have to know the rules before you do it on Duolingo."
"It's really hard to figure out the grammar, grammar's really important when you write."
"I try to go on (Duolingo) every day."
"I think it does (little and often) really well."
"It's easier than looking at a black and white sheet."
"The lingots really motivate me. They're like gems, they look nice. If you want to buy stuff you can use them."
"I like the idea of the store."
"I would definitely list out all of the vocabulary. For example, if there is 'clothes'... I would create a comprehensive table. For me tables do help."
"I would say, add different kinds of languages, like Asian languages."
"If you put the right sort of value into (Duolingo), make it worth something, it's really made language, something difficult, easier."
"People don't like practising, I think (not being motivated) is just laziness."

Project Outline

Teacher Inquiry - Action Plan

What am I trying to improve?

I am trying to improve use of independent learning tools (Duolingo) in Island School European languages teaching. I want to expand the potential for independent self-paced learning in order to improve language learning and also improve the range of languages students can learn.

How will I collect feedback?

I will collect feedback from my students currently using this learning tool, to present to my colleagues/team. I will collect feedback from my team after the project.

What actions are needed?

I will do some online research into Duolingo and how other individuals/schools are using it. I will survey/interview my students who are already using this tool. As a team (EuroLangs dept) we will discuss how best to use this tool, and as teachers we will roll out our plan across the department.

How will I set up the inquiry?

I will survey/interview students, and gather feedback from teachers. I will collect this information and post it online on a blog to record my findings.

When will it happen? What will be the timeline?

It will happen January-March 2015.  Before this time I will research the use of Duolingo worldwide. In January-March I will do the research, meet with my team of 3 teachers, make a plan to introduce this in all lessons and collect feedback from the teachers to how they think it went. All of this will be posted on a dedicated blog to record the inquiry in real time.