Narges' Genius Hour Blog

Hi all, To begin, I decided to create a quick infographic to review some of the comparisons I made with the two apps.      Next up I will go ahead and declare the winner in each of the 4 qualifications I established at the beginning of this project: Accessibility  Both apps are fair contenders in this category as they are free to use and available on both the Apple and Google Playstore as well as on a desktop computer as a website. Ultimately, I would have to give this category to Duolingo as it is slightly cheaper if you were to pay for a premium account.  Diversity of Learning Style With the ability to look at pictures, read translations, write out translations and even speak French into the microphone for evaluation, Duolingo definitely wins the diversity of learning style category. User Friendliness  Meanwhile, Memrise wins the category for user-friendliness. I find their app overall easier to navigate as the questions are ...

Welcome, everyone. I decided to post a part two to my last blog post as analyzing Duolingo took a whole other day's worth of study. So let's get started!      Like with Memrise, when I first opened Duolingo, I was once again presented with an ad. This was also an internal ad for the company itself, advertising some course upgrades and the option to try Duolingo Plus (the premium paid version). Unlike Memrise, there was no mention of prices, but a quick search on their website shows its $6.99/month, which about 39 cents less than Duolingo's monthly rate without the 50% discount. While I've already discussed the fact I think students should have free access to educational tools, I do like the fact Duolingo mentions that part of the proceeds from their sales goes to making Duolingo available in countries where education is not as accessible.      To further compare Duolingo to Memrise, I tried lowering the volume on my phone to see if the app would det...

Hi all!  It's been another week and I had the opportunity to really start diving deep into these language learning apps. It's becoming clear they are targeting two different sets of audiences (tourists versus students), but the techniques they use are also very different and I am curious to see which one will be deemed more effective! Let's start with Memrise :      The first thing I noticed when I opened the app was that I was once again prompted with an ad. It was an ad for Memrise's premium account, which I think is a reasonable thing to advertise compared to third party ads you sometimes get with free apps. This is something I think is important to monitor though, as these are young students using these apps and we don't want them thinking they need to purchase anything to play.     * That said, if you are looking to purchase the premium version of Memrise, the prices are pretty reasonable. A  one-year membership using the 50% discount they w...