Providing free online global language education to 150 million students

WHAT IS DUOLINGO¹

· Duolingo is a freemium language-learning platform through a language learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. (A freemium is a pricing strategy by which a product or service is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for advanced features, functionality, or related products and services²);

· Duolingo offers all its language courses free of charge;

· 68 different language courses across 23 languages are offered through the language-learning website and app with 22 additional courses in development (as of Nov 2016);

· The app is available on iOS, Android and Windows 8 and 10 platforms with about 150 million registered students/users across the world.

HISTORY¹

· The Duolingo project was created by Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn and his graduate student, Severin Hacker at the end of 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

· An important inspiration for Duolingo came from von Ahn himself. He was born in Guatemala and saw how expensive it was for people in his community to learn English;

· Both co-founders believe that “free education will really change the world” and wanted to supply the people an outlet to do so – hence the initiation of Duolingo.

WHAT DUOLINGO SAY ABOUT THEMSELVES³

· Duolingo is a great way to learn a language. It provides personalized education because people learn in different ways;

· It’s addictive, the lessons are split into bite-sized units that feel like games, gamification poured into every lesson;

· Students can study during breaks, commuting, while waiting in line;

· Duolingo teaches students how to read, write, listen, and speak a language;

· Extremely effective;

· Completely free so it is universally accessible: no annoying ads, no misleading In-App purchases, no subscription fees;

· The creators know it’s hard to stay motivated when learning online, so they made Duolingo so much fun that people would prefer picking up new skills over playing a game.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT DUOLINGO

· According to Dave (studying French from the English platform):

o Duolingo is “so much better, not to mention free” – compared to the ones he tried before;

o Duolingo is “a lot more interactive and much smarter at becoming progressively yet appropriately more difficult as you learn things;”

· According to Mary (studying German from the English platform):

o “Duolingo makes learning German language fun and I look forward to my next 10 minutes a day.”

· I tested out the Basic French lessons from an English platform, and saw that:

o Daily goal options for the lessons are “only” 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes/day. These "short" lesson durations look very doable and encouraging. The fact that students partake in these "short" lessons daily will ensure that they build up substantial expertise over time;

o The lesson activities are “fun” and “interesting.”

LANGUAGES ON OFFER AT DUOLINGO³

Danish	Hindi	Spanish
Dutch	Hungarian	Swahili
English	Italian	Swedish
Esperanto*	Irish	Turkish
French	Norwegian	Ukrainian
German	Polish	Vietnamese
Greek	Portuguese	Welsh
Hebrew	Romanian	---
High Valyrian*	Russian	---