Duolingo & Microcredentialing

Several years ago, I joined a health group named Sparkpeople. Whenever I logged in, read an article, tracked my food and/or exercise, and contributed to the community discussions, I earned "spark points." The spark points were to keep me coming to the site and keeping up with my health goals. I loved getting the points and seeing the feedback from the community. But, I eventually stopped logging in -- life got in the way, and I was pretty much alone, not knowing any of the community members personally.

Two years ago, my sister and other family members signed up for Fitbit contests and played around with those for a while, earning badges and climbing up the leaderboard in our little community. But we eventually stopped. Life, again.

So, I was more than skeptical about playing around with Duolingo. I've probably downloaded and deleted that app a half-dozen times since I learned about it. However, this time, my daughter was playing with it. She has a friend whose family speaks Spanish, and my daughter wanted to know how to talk in this "secret" language (her words!). She downloaded the app and added the friend and my niece to her follow list. They have been having a blast, and it's fun to hear her speaking Spanish into the phone and naming things around the house.

This time when I downloaded the app, I started with a community of two people who I care about and who want to learn to speak (or at least begin to understand) a new language. I'm having lots of challenges with learning, though. I haven't gotten through the first main level because of the verbs! But, instead of feeling upset and defeated, the app tells  me to "Keep trying, you'll get it" and gives me a different task -one I've been successful with before. This repetition, I believe, is the way to keep practicing those foundational skills (vocabulary and grammar) that keep my confidence up.

The screenshots show my progress both as a learner and with the microcredentials that I'm earning:

I'm stuck in a loop regarding how this type of learning helps me or not. On one hand, the only way to learn something new is to practice, something definitely that Duolingo encourages because if I haven't checked in every 24 hours, I get a notification. And I see that I'm making progress --incremental, yes, but progress. However, I can't shake the idea that I should be reading or working on a crochet project that I can't seem to finish. Like, is this wasting my time? I haven't really engaged in "conversation" for the vocabulary and grammar I'm learning even though the app has a "repeat this" section. It's not a back and forth conversation where the real learning normally takes place. This feels like the classes at my high school, where students can point to objects, but not actually speak the language. 

Maybe when I keep going with the app this will change and I'll have to "interact" with the program. And, maybe because I'm not a "gamer" I don't keep going with badges and microcredentials like others would. Game-like learning/classes aren't on the top of my list of ways I learn.  However, I see the value of offering microcredentialing to my students (and presented about this at NCTIES this year, specifically geared toward reading). To this end, James Gee, one of the literacy researchers who I read and admire wrote a book titled What Video Games Have to Tell Us About Literacy and Learning (2003). He writes: 

"(T)eaching and learning is, in my view, a matter of three things:

     The Learner must be enticed to try, even if he or she already has good grounds to be afraid to try.

     The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if he or she begins with little motivation to do so.

     The learner must achieve some meaningful success when he or she has expended this effort.

There are three principles here because people will not put in effort if they are not even willing to try in a domain; success without effort is not rewarding; and effort with little success is equally unrewarding."

Therefore, in order to keep my students (and me) interested in learning like this, we need to talk about effort and hopefully they will see some success that keeps them going.

Reference

• Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.