Big changes coming to a Duolingo home screen near you!

The home screens, they are a-changin’. 🤠

Teachers are constantly adjusting their instructional materials and techniques to ensure that students receive the best possible educational experience. At Duolingo we do the same thing. 

As Duolingo has grown and added more and more features, it's gotten more and more difficult for learners to know what to do in order to maximize their learning. We want to simplify that! 

With a new linear path that includes Stories, and with easily accessible grammar Tips and helpful phrases, students will never again need to wonder what to do next. The path is also differentiated. Students working at a specific place in the path will still encounter the same content, but each will experience an adapted level of difficulty based on their previous accuracy. This will ensure that students will get the right lesson at just the right time.

Some highlights

One path to rule them all

A new linear path will ensure that students are guided through Duolingo's content in the way that's best for their learning progress. 

Built-in variety and review

Stories will appear directly in the path rather than in a separate tab, and spaced repetition, which mimics the “hover” method described in this blog post, is built in.

Grammar support and content previews with Guidebooks

Exercises will be divided into units, and each unit will include a Guidebook packed with tips and helpful phrases for students to focus on.

Clear and comparable progress

The new layout will ensure that you can easily visualize each student's progress through the course, and can easily compare students’ progress.

Who will see the changes and when?

This change won’t happen overnight. In fact, you likely won’t see a change yourself, unless you want to (see “Here’s where you come in” below), until late summer at the earliest. We're starting with new users on iOS in March and will slowly bring in more and more users, including those with existing Duolingo accounts and those who use Android devices or web browsers. We hope to make the transition complete by the end of the summer.

What does this mean for Duolingo’s teachers? 

If there are no longer Skills, what will happen to Skill assignments? What information about a curriculum will teachers be able to see, and how will they see it? The truth is that we don’t know everything yet, and we want you to help us make decisions that will create the best experiences for you and your students. 

Here’s what we do know

1. You’ll be able to view and search the content that your students will be learning in a course.
2. You’ll be able to view individual student and class activity and, because that activity will exist within a linear path, you’ll have the ability to compare activity between students and relative to the course overall.
3. You’ll still be able to see insights about students’ performance, such as XP earned and time spent learning.
4. You’ll still be able to create XP assignments.

Here’s where you come in

We want to learn from you!

• Join our Facebook group: Collaborate with other educators and with our team in real time, and stay up-to-date with the latest Duolingo and Duolingo for Schools developments.
• Try the new home screen yourself: To try out the new home screen early, fill out this form.
• Ask questions and give us feedback: You can reach me (Tracee) or Vivian via email at [e-mail]. And you can always submit a ticket to our Support Team (that would be Sarah–Hi Sarah!) using this link.

We’re in this together

Things are going to change a lot, and quickly. That goes for the new Duolingo home screen and the new version of Duolingo for Schools that works with the home screen changes. We know that teachers’ work is hard, and we only want to make it easier. 

Throughout this process, the Schools team will be learning with you about how to best support you and your students. As we do that, the number of items in the list of what we DO know above will grow, and we’ll remain committed to helping you get the most out of Duolingo for Schools. 

We’ll also always do our absolute best to give you the most up-to-date information throughout this process, and we hope that you’ll be patient with and work with us so that we can build the best learning and teaching experiences possible.