Game Name: Duolingo
Designer/Developer: Duolingo
Platforms: (iOS, Android)
High-level instructional goal: Language Acquisition
Link to game: https://www.duolingo.com/
Learning Objectives
The Duolingo game serves as a way for users to learn languages and offers a variety of different languages to choose from. I think that the only real prerequisite is the ability to read a language that the game supports (not necessarily a language you are trying to learn). Although the game reinforces a lot of concepts using temporal contiguity, the ability to read is an absolute prerequisite as a lot of the initial instruction is text-based. Additionally, the game teaches language in comparison to the one you are familiar with, such as by displaying a sentence in a language you are trying to learn and then breaking down its meaning based upon the language you already know. So with this, there is another prerequisite of not just being able to read a supported language, but also being able to understand certain grammatical elements and proper usage based context.
While there are many different languages that one can learn in playing Duolingo, the essential experience is similar across the board. The game encourages developing language comprehension on multiple levels: speaking, reading, and listening. The game does this by assessing speaking ability, reading comprehension, and auditory comprehension. In each lesson, there are prompts for the player to speak the phrase that is on the screen, and in this way, a learning objective is for the player to develop the ability to speak correctly in their chosen language. There are also similar prompts for listening, such as when they have you transcribe an audio clip, or for reading components, such as when you must correctly arrange a collection of individual words or phrases.
Game Elements
The game’s core mechanic is a progression system that encourages the player to keep learning and levelling up. Each language is split into a series of checkpoints, and each checkpoint is split into a series of individual lessons, and each lesson is split into a series of levels and features a quiz to determine if the lesson is completed. In order to progress to the next checkpoint, one must pass the quiz for each lesson.
There are a few interesting gameplay dynamics, such as the heart system, where a player only has a finite number of tries for a particular lesson before they ‘fail’ it and must try again later. The game also has a ‘streak’ mechanic that identifies how many days in a row the user has been consistently playing. This streak can be kept alive, but I think the idea of having a streak to maintain and to not ‘break’ serves as a way for users to keep coming back. The functional role of the streak is that it can be used to increase experience points, which determine whether a player is meeting their daily goal. There is also a ranking system for similar players in the same language you are learning, and for this the experience points are also used to determine standings. There are also free practice sessions, which can serve as a form of pretraining for the actual lessons. These practice sessions allow the player to freely practice the course material without having to worry about losing hearts. There is also a timing mechanic, like when a lesson hasn’t been practiced in some time, it “breaks” and the player has to replay the lesson quiz in order to “fix” it. This encourages sustained practice and repetition, as opposed to large amounts of practice at one time, which speaks to the “Spacing” principle.
Learning Principles
Duolingo uses a lot of Multimedia and Temporal Contiguity. For example, Duolingo often pairs a word or phrase that is being said with an actual image of what the word or phrase represents. This is also usually in addition to having someone speaking the word or phrase, which also has multiple graphics that represent the speaker of the word. One thing that is interesting is the game’s usage of “Redundancy”, as there are a lot of redundant elements. For example, on a given prompt it may have the sentence in one language, but then there is also a graphic to show what the sentence is representing, on top of having audio that plays the sentence.
As mentioned earlier, the game also encourages Spacing through its timed system for re-doing already completed lessons. The heart dynamic also plays into this and encourages the user to either practice or take a break if they lose all hearts, it also prevents the player from mindlessly guessing and checking and forces them to think about whether their answer is the correct one. In contrast to this, Duolingo also allows for free pretraining where a mistake does not cost a heart (like in the lessons).
Duolingo also has Immediate Feedback Timing and immediately alerts the player/user of the correctness of their answer. For those that have paid for Duolingo, it offers a personalized training regime for your frequent errors. In the regular free version, the feedback is still personalized and error specific. Regardless, there is feedback on performance for each mistake and the game usually tries to explain what the mistake is.
Due to the way the lesson plan is organized, the player must complete a ‘mastery’ check in order to progress to the next level, this is an example of the game’s usage of “Application” in its instructional design system. Duolingo also makes use of Segmenting, as each language is split into multiple levels, where each level has multiple categories, and each category has multiple lessons. Duolingo also has frequent testing through quizzes, and the usage of hearts (where each wrong answer removes a heart) adds to the testing dynamic.
Overall Critique
I think this game greatly succeeds at being an educational game, as its goal is very clear. I don’t think many users play this game for ‘fun’ necessarily and typically go into it with a ‘learning’ mindset. The game also supports learning from multiple angles, by allowing for practice, administering quizzes, and segmenting of lessons. I think the heart system is effective at encouraging a user to critically think through their answers before submitting. In general, Duolingo does a good job of introducing variability, but this variability, although interesting at first, does not change much over the course of the game’s lessons. As a result, I think the game can also do a better job at maintaining variability and keeping the player on their toes. Once you get into a rhythm, you know what to expect from each lesson. There are a specific set of question types and, in conjunction with the visual clues, it can become a bit easy at points. Additionally, the instruction scheme seems to be consistent (at least from what I was able to play) and does not change much from lesson to lesson, which can prevent a user from being continuously engaged as they play for longer periods. However, to combat this there are a few interesting systems that can increase user engagement, such as the streaks or ranking system.
There are some things that I am not too sure about though, such as the usage of “Redundancy” in its individual lessons. As mentioned before, the game likes to pair text with audio and with visuals, this can sometimes make it too easy to figure out what the correct answer is even if you may not understand why the answer is correct. This aspect also plays into the “Modality Principle” and how players may find their attention divided when presented with multiple layers of information. The game provides a lot of clues to the correct answer and I think this could potentially take away from critically thinking through an answer, and in combination with the repetitive instructional scheme, this can turn it into more of a guess and check process.
