Luis von Ahn
CEO and Co-founder – Duolingo
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/08/learning-the-duolingo-how-one-app-speaks-volumes-for-language-learning
Duolingo is a mobile app designed for language learning. Learners, either basic or intermediate level speakers, are provided short 5-20 minute daily lessons. A series of multiple choice, matching, speaking or translations appear as challenges that are awarded points for successful completion. The lessons are recorded in a tree format, requiring the user to master a concept before moving on. Once the skill is mastered, the user is periodically reminded that memory fades without use, and a sliding scale is shown for concepts requiring a refresher. The concepts are strategically chosen and adapted for users as described by von Ahn in his interview with Lottie O’conor,
“We’ve done a lot of work to improve how we teach and because of our users we are in a unique position to work out how best to teach a language. For example, if we want to know whether we should teach plurals before adjectives, for the next 50,000 users, we’ll teach half of them plurals before adjectives, half the other way around and then we measure which of these groups learns better. We figure out in a couple of days which is more effective and then switch everyone to that. We are slowly figuring out the best way to teach a language, and we’re doing it scientifically.”
Users can compete against themselves or join in a friendly competition with other users. As of March of this year, 70 million users had downloaded this free app. (Hickey, 2015)
Co-founders Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker developed the Duolingo idea while working together on a translation project for Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg. (Hickey, 2015). They recognized the advantages that knowing a second language can bring and wanted to provide this for learners in an efficient, fun and cost-effective way (O’conor, 2014). Von Ahn grew up in Guatemala, a country with one of lowest literacy rates in the world, and wanted to create a more accessible way to learn a language (Luckerson, 2014). Duolingo is a for-profit company that does not use advertisements for capital. Instead, it provides a translation service to companies such as CNN, where amateur translators practice their skills translating documents. Additionally they have also begun a language certification program (Luckerson, 2014). Von Ahn is no stranger to success. No only does “von Ahn run what is arguably the hottest educational tool online at the moment, but he’s also a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University” (Luckerson, 2014). By the time of Duolingo’s inception, the 35 year old had already sold two successful companies to Google, Captcha and reCaptcha, making him a millionaire (Hickey, 2015). He has completed multiple fellowships and been included on multiple recognition lists such as Popular Science’s Brilliant Top 10 and the MIT Technology Review’s TR 35 (wikipedia, retrieved Oct 1, 2015). His innovation, strong business and education understanding and collaborative nature, certainly make him an entrepreneur to watch!
Hickey, Shane. (March 8, 2015) http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/08/learning-the-duolingo-how-one-app-speaks-volumes-for-language-learning
Luis von Ahn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_von_Ahn
O’conor, Lottie. (Aug 27, 2014) Duolingo creator: I wanted to create a way to learn languages for free. Retrieved October 1, 2015 from: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/aug/27/luis-von-ahn-ceo-duolingo-interview
