A1 – Mobile Affordance of Duolingo

Hi everyone. I apologize this took so long. I had a heck of a time formatting the files between my Samsung 9 and my Mac Book, and I had to record it twice. The entire presentation I recorded on my smartphone using X Recorder and PowerPoint Mobile. You are seeing exactly what I am seeing while I record. The entire project also resulted in a second artifact being created, which I am including in my A1 in support for ETEC 523 OER efforts. I know both artifacts are over the 6 minute limit, but both were a result of two places of inspiration, and they are both of equal merit. The first moment was the Moveable Feast by Group 5 and their short topic concerning accessibility. I want to make sure that future students can have access to my work, particularly those that may be visually impaired. If someone from your group can post a link to that section in the comments, that would be fantastic. The second place of inspiration was from one of our classmates that was discussing the need to use more of our general tools on our mobile devices, and I am so sorry I cannot remember who you are. Please post your link to that article in the comments below if you have a chance to read this. If not I will find the article and posted it later in the week. I will inform you that my first attempt to use the mobile tools failed miserably, but it was a great experiment, and I encourage everyone else to start playing with your mobil tools in this course to see what you can come up with.

My topic is very academic, but it does provide some powerful insight into how one may want to consider assessing mobile apps and their use in the classroom. I have never seen or heard of anyone considering the concept of a model to assess mobile apps in education, nor am I saying the method I assessed Duolingo with is necessary correct, but it is a starting point and it is something to consider in the future.

Below I have provided some of the description I used in my Youtube post.

This video is for my A1 Presentation for ETEC 523 Mobile and Open Learning. In this presentation I am trying to assess Duolingo’s mobile affordance for language learning by using evidence from academic papers. I do not expect anyone to agree with my observations and I encourage constructive debate that may unlock better tools for assessing various language learning apps. I do not believe Duolingo is a bad app, rather that language instructors need to consider the language learning objectives/ outcomes of their students, the lesson plan, and pedagogy prior to the introduction of the app.

*** Note – All pictures were taken from my smartphone using the free version of the Duolingo App for Android ***

This is my mobile video. Below you will also find the audio recording I created.

Mobile Affordance of Duolingo – (with more detail).

Below is the transcript and references for my audio recording.

Duolingo is a language learning app used on mobile smartphone and laptop. Users can chose between 18 different languages using the grammar – translation method to discern contextual meaning. Once enrolled, learners may choose between unit levels, story mode, and language practice mode to learn the target language. The app allows learners to also set daily language goals and compete with other Duolingo players in league boards. Duolingo’s main mission is “to make education free, fun and accessible to all (Duolingo, 2020). One the surface Duolingo may seem to be a good addition to a language classroom, but a more detailed picture of how it could or how it should not be used may reveal some shortcomings. We can do this by assessing the affordances that the app provides. For this context, mobile affordance will refer to the “the quality or property of an object that defines its possible uses or makes clear how it can or should be used” (Merriam – Webster Dictionary, 1828) as a mobile app. For use in education, “mobile devices may offer more opportunities for students than other types of technology, mainly because of their portability, social interactivity, connectivity, individuality, among other aspects” (Finardi et al. 2016, 51). It is therefore important to ask: How much mobile affordance does Duolingo offer? How applicable are these affordances to language learning? To assess Duolingo’s viability as an educational mobile app, 4 criteria were considered:

1. Accessibility

2. Motivation

3. Self-efficacy and Achievement

4. Interaction

First let’s discuss accessibility. In order for an app to be useful, users must have access to it functions. Accessibility determines the ability of the user to navigate through the app. Ballantyne et al. (2018) suggest good mobile apps follow 4 principals which include:

1. Perceivability – the ability for all users to understand the app’s content for functionaility.

2. Operability – the ability for all user to use the app’s functionality regardless of their ability.

3. Understandability – the ability for users to comprehend the discourse presented within the app.

4. Robustness – the ability for the app to be available to users regardless of OS system or mobile device in use.

(Ballantyne et al., 2018)

To simplify this understanding, perceivability, operability, and understandability suggest a focus on the user experience. Munday (2016) decided to test Duolingo’s accessibility by surveying 2 groups of university students learning Spanish while using the app. It was identified that over 80% of both the beginner and intermediate groups found the app easy and helpful to their learning, however the intermediate students found the app less enjoyable to use vs the beginner students. Another study by Finardi et al. (2016) interviewed 80 L2 learners to assess mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) using Duolingo. They identified an interesting gap between overemphases on vocabulary and an absence of contextualized language production, basically no accessibility to real time interaction with native speakers. This suggests that though Duolingo provides an ease-of-use experience, it may not provide all the functionality that users may want, enjoy or need to learn a foreign language. This also leads into the debate of robustness. Duolingo can be played on various mobile devices, but to acquire a more authentic learning experiences supplemental apps such as Skype, Whatsapp, GoogleHangouts etc. will very likely need to be included.

But let’s discuss the second topic, motivation. Motivation is typically divided into two forms intrinsic and extrinsic. For educational learning, Malone and Lepper’s Theory (1987) identify 6 elements that may improve motivation: “challenge[s], curiosity, control, cooperation, competition and recognition” (Ciampa 2014, 83), which could possibly form clues to understanding motivation in a mobile environment. Hidayati and Diana (2019) identified 1 intrinsic and 3 forms of extrinsic motivation in their mixed method study of university L2 English speakers using Duolingo and the Hello language apps. These motivations included self enjoyment an intrinsic motivation, career prospects, guilt, and personal development as extrinsic motivations. The researchers also found that though students were highly enthusiastic to use the apps, they were reluctant to explore features and learn further outside of the classroom environment, even though they were offered the affordance to do so with their mobile device. This was in contrast to Ciampa’s (2014) research of elementary L2 English learners being very engaged with various apps to learn English on their tablets, suggesting that adults and children may have slightly different factors influencing their motivation to use language mobile apps for learning.

A third way that mobile apps try to motivate users to continue playing is through self – efficacy and achievement. Self – efficacy is the belief that the user can succeed in accomplishing an objective (Gabriel Lopez-Garrido, 2020), where as achievement is the user receiving some form of reward that they have completed the objective (Galli & Fraternali, 2014). When self – efficacy and achievement are merged into an educational environment, the result is called gamification. As Groening & Binnewies (2019) explain, gamification is the method of taking game like features and incorporating them into a non-game like setting in an effort to change human behaviour. This change is intended to result in improved outcomes such as improved test scores or final grades. Rachels & Rockinson-Szapkiw (2016) tested self – efficacy and language achievement among 4^th grade L2 Spanish student and discovered no difference between Duolingo users and students taught with traditional methods. Huynh et al. (2016) explored further by calculating the badge features of Duolingo and identified its game refinement value, which measured its attractiveness and sophistication, to be between 0.020 and 0.025 well below the value of other games being between 0.07 to 0.08. The researchers also identified that new users who started at the beginning of the game found completing milestones more enjoyable vs those that started in the middle or were more advanced learners of the target language. They recommended a need “to increase the degree of gamification of Duolingo by decreasing the number of lessons or increasing the number of skills in the target courses” (Huynh et al 2016, 276), which as of 2019 was slighlty introduced to Duolingo’s mobile app as story mode and extended lessons.

The last topic is interaction. One concern about introducing a mobile device into any learning environment or classroom setting is how it will impact interactions between the students and their teacher. Chai & Fan (2016) define this three-way relationship as the Mobile Inverted Constructivism Theory, meaning through a mobile environment, the learner is actively generating knowledge independently, a learning situation, where the teacher acts as more of a guide. In this case, Mehtälä (2015) identified that the majority of language content from Duolingo comes from literature, native speakers and/or advanced language learners. Users basically share answers and ask questions using Duolingo’s blog. Though the author mentions some evidence of scaffolding, due to delays in sending comments, the communication was fragmented. Though users can add friends, see their score profile and achievements, “[Duolingo] does not provide enough affordances for using the target language in authentic contexts or in a creative and social manner…” (Mehtälä 2015, 52).

Over-all, Duolingo offers very low mobile affordance because its mobile features are limited to what is applicable and necessary for language learning. Though the app is very accessible in ease of use and flexibility of mobile platforms, it lacks the types of applicational features required for meaningful real time language communication. Duolingo does not provide the type of incentives to motivate learners to explore its gaming features independently. The app also does not provide user customization to consider motivational differences among age groups and the skill levels of language learners. Self-efficacy and achievement did not change when comparing outcomes of students using Duolingo to those being taught with traditional language learning. Gamification values did not meet the threshold needed to be an attractive and sophisticated game, suggesting learners will likely get board with Duolingo over a long duration of time. Lastly, Duolingo does not provide the social and creative mobile interaction required for authentic language learning experience with native or fluent L2 speakers. This is not to argue that DuoLingo is a bad app for language learning, however, it does draw some important questions that teachers need to consider concerning mobile instructional design, the in class lesson plan and pedagogy in order to achieve the desired outcomes for their learners.

References:

Ballantyne, M., Jha, A., Jacobsen, A., Hawker, J. S., & El-Glaly, Y. N. (2018, November). Study of accessibility guidelines of mobile applications. In Proceedings of the 17th international conference on mobile and ubiquitous multimedia (pp. 305-315). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yasmine_El-Glaly/publication/329494003_Study_of_Accessibility_Guidelines_of_Mobile_Applications/links/5c23a560a6fdccfc706b0b6b/Study-of-Accessibility-Guidelines-of-Mobile-Applications.pdf

Chai, J., & Fan, K. K. (2016). Mobile inverted constructivism: education of interaction technology in social media. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 12(5), 1425-1442. https://www.ejmste.com/download/mobile-inverted-constructivism-education-of-interaction-technology-in-social-media-4552.pdf

Ciampa, K. (2014). Learning in a mobile age: an investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82-96.

Duolingo. (2020). What is Duolingo?. Duolingo. [Official Website]. May. https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204829090-What-is-Duolingo-

Finardi, K. R., Leao, R. G., & Amorim, G. B. (2016). Mobile assisted language learning: Affordances and limitations of Duolingo. Education and Linguistics Research, 2(2), 48-65.

Gabriel Lopez-Garrido. (2020). Self-Efficacy Theory. Simply Phycology. August 20. https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-efficacy.html#:~:text=Take%2Dhome%20Messages,%2Dbeing%2C%20and%20personal%20accomplishment.

Galli, L., & Fraternali, P. (2014). Achievement systems explained. In Trends and applications of serious gaming and social media (pp. 25-50). Springer, Singapore.

Groening, C., & Binnewies, C. (2019). “Achievement unlocked!”-The impact of digital achievements as a gamification element on motivation and performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 97, 151-1

Hidayati, T., & Diana, S. (2019). STUDENTS’MOTIVATION TO LEARN ENGLISH USING MOBILE APPLICATIONS: THE CASE OF DUOLINGO AND HELLO ENGLISH. JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies), 6(2), 189-213.

Huynh, D., Zuo, L., & Iida, H. (2016, December). Analyzing gamification of “Duolingo” with focus on its course structure. In International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance (pp. 268-277). Springer, Cham.

Mehtälä, H. (2015). The affordances of Duolingo for mobile-assisted language learning: a sociocultural and ecological perspective (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oulu). http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/nbnfioulu-201512182309.pdf

Merriam -Webster. (1828). Definition of Affordance. [Online Dictionary]. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affordance

Munday, P. (2016). The case for using DUOLINGO as part of the language classroom experience. RIED: revista iberoamericana de educación a distancia, 19(1), 83-101. http://e-spacio.uned.es/fez/eserv/bibliuned:revistaRied-2016-19-1-7040/Duolingo.pdf

Rachels, J. R., & Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J. (2018). The effects of a mobile gamification app on elementary students’ Spanish achievement and self-efficacy. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31(1-2), 72-89.

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