Duolingo is a language education platform that teaches 35 languages to more than 300 million students worldwide. Duolingo and the Duolingo English Test both leverage state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to develop novel instructional and assessment technologies—such as personalized practice schedules and data-driven proficiency tests.
This presentation will explore several projects where Duolingo combines vast amounts of language learner data with machine learning, computational linguistics, and psychometrics to improve learning, testing, and engagement outcomes.
Burr Settles, Research Director at Duolingo
Burr is a scientist, engineer, and research director at Duolingo, developing statistical machine learning systems to improve learning, engagement, and assessment. He also runs
FAWM.ORG (a global collaborative songwriting experiment) and is the author of Active Learning—a text on AI algorithms that are curious and exploratory (if you will). His research has been published in numerous journals and conferences, and has been featured in The BBC, Slate, Forbes, and WIRED. In past lives, he was a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon and earned his PhD from UW-Madison. He lives in Pittsburgh, where he gets around by bike and plays guitar in the pop band Delicious Pastries.
Jeff Tousignant, Senior Marketing Manager at Duolingo
Jeff helps share the innovation and accessibility of Duolingo English Test with institutions, counselors, and students around the world. He has over ten years experience working with higher ed learning and assessment technology at companies like Pearson Education and Cengage Learning. As a Duolingo user since its inception, he has a passion for language learning and international education.
