1. technology and computing
2. programming languages

Michelle Jeanty
Introduction
• Pop Lang is a tutoring app to help students learn foreign
languages through gamification. A student can take quizzes set
up by professors, create their own quizzes, or use one of the
premade language quizzes on their Apple or Android enabled
phone/tablet or on the Pop Lang website. After completing a
quiz, students can view their progress chart which highlights
the quiz takers strengths and weaknesses.
• Languages supported in the Pop Lang app include English,
Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Korean, and Chinese.
Background
•Most college students today are required to
take at least two years of a foreign language.
Our founder Michelle Jeanty and her team
wanted find a fun and educational way to help
students study and keep from being
distracted.
Objectives
Practice
◦ Students will practice speaking another language by speaking out loud or writing sentences
even when alone. Students will also learn how to handle random foreign conversations at any
given time.
Studying
◦ Pop Lang users have a distraction free study environment away from their smart phones or
tablets without them.
Teaching
◦ Teachers have an alternative method to reach students outside of the classroom. Students
can teach themselves about different language structures.
Objectives Cont.
Focus
◦ A user will remember not to get distracted when studying. Students will take
the quizzes repeatedly.
Fun
◦ Students have fun trying to access their electronics while studying a foreign
language.
Convenience
◦ Tablets and cellphone become study tools instead of interferences. Students
can study on the go and possibly study exactly what the teacher intended.
Goals
Mastery
◦ Upon passing all of their Pop Lang quizzes, users will have the skills to pass a college
level language course and have diverse conversations in the language of study.
Improvement
◦ Students who used Pop Lang to aid in learning a language should see improvement
by at least 50%. The average time a user spends procrastinating should decrease by
50%.
Confidence
◦ Avid Pop Lang users will have more practice and feel more comfortable about
speaking another language out loud.
Goals Cont.
Speed
◦ Pop Lang users will retain concepts of foreign languages twice as fast students
who do not use the app or with traditional studying methods alone.
Want
◦ Over time Students will want to learn more about foreign languages or
multiple languages and motivate others to join.
Popularity
◦ Growing popularity will inspire more teachers to incorporate the Pop Lang app
in their classrooms. Pop Lang becomes a well-known source for language
training worldwide.
Strategies
•The strategies used in efforts to collect data for Pop Lang
include user centered design guidelines such as identifying
the user and making sure the use is the main focus not the
product.
•After choosing college students between the age 18 and
25 we at Pop Lang will continue to use evolutionary
prototyping methods to design the Pop Lang app. This app
will have to be continually updated to the users changing
needs, social trends, newly discovered issues and bugs.
Prototypes
Logo
Login
Settings
•
For the Logo I wanted to use a sans serif font that will look
less harsh and inviting to the app user. Blues represent
hardworking and professionalism. Brown is a warm color that
embody relaxation and elegance. In order to incorporate all
of the cultures featured in this app I went with a brown and
blue theme. The represents a melting pop of all of the
countries mixed together. The brown also symbolizes land
and the blue is for water. Pop Lang’s icon is droplets falling as
they would when a bubble bursts.
•
The first screen a student will see when opening Pop Lang is
the Login. Most of today’s popular apps allow users log in
with not only their email but popular social media sites such
as Facebook and Twitter. After logging in in for the first time,
the app user will be prompted to get familiar with the
settings. The Settings section showcases the top rated most
distracting apps for students. The user can toggle on which
apps they are willing to lock to reduce distractions when
studying. These locks can be turned off at any time in the
settings section.
Prototypes
Languages
Quizzes
Progress
•
The next place students will travel in the app tutorial is the
Languages section. There are six languages to choose from and
users are allowed to study from them all simultaneously.
Navigating between the different languages and all of the other
sections in the Pop Lang app is done by means of backwards and
forwards buttons.
•
Every student will have a “Quizzes” section which will hold all of
their desired quizzes. Quizzes can be added to this section from
the app which houses Pop Lang’s signature quizzes or added only
from the Pop Lang Website. Additional quiz input methods include
user created tests and teacher submitted tests.
•
Students can check their improvements in the Progress section. In
the progress section, different types of charts will display a user’s
strengths and weaknesses from up to a month ago. The various
charts include Strengths: Which category a student excels the
most in, Tries: How many tries each quiz took to master, and
Progress: Overall chart to view improvement in comparison to the
past.
Prototypes
Languages
Quizzes
Progress
•
The next place students will travel in the app tutorial is the
Languages section. There are six languages to choose from and
users are allowed to study from them all simultaneously.
Navigating between the different languages and all of the other
sections in the Pop Lang app is done by means of backwards and
forwards buttons.
•
Every student will have a “Quizzes” section which will hold all of
their desired quizzes. Quizzes can be added to this section from
the app which houses Pop Lang’s signature quizzes or added only
from the Pop Lang Website. Additional quiz input methods include
user created tests and teacher submitted tests.
•
Students can check their improvements in the Progress section. In
the progress section, different types of charts will display a user’s
strengths and weaknesses from up to a month ago. The various
charts include Strengths: Which category a student excels the
most in, Tries: How many tries each quiz took to master, and
Progress: Overall chart to view improvement in comparison to the
past.
Prototypes
Multiple Choice
Voice Input
• There are three different types of quiz input
modes for the quizzes to satisfy a range of user’s
needs and preferences. The default mode is Voice
Input with a text input box. One of the main goals
of Pop Lang is to get students used to speaking
different languages out loud and engaging in
conversations. By holding down the microphone
button a tone will sound to prompt the user to
begin speaking. Students who wish to use
alternative answering modes may use the text box
to type in their answer or opt into Multiple Choice
at the start of each quiz. Quizzes can have up to 5
multiple choice selections. At the end of each quiz
the score page will load. Students will see how
they scored on the quiz and have the option to
retry the quiz or add it to the pop quiz mode.
Prototypes
Pop Quiz
Lock
• Pop quiz powers the app Lock mode. In app
lock mode the preselected distracting apps
will be locked. Upon opening a distracted
app the user will be prompted to answer a
pop quiz question via an alert pop up. The
pop lock method can help students study
foreign languages in an entertaining and
unprepared matter. Students can also use
this method to discourage procrastination
while studying any subject traditionally. The
default input method to unlock these apps is
voice/ text. There will be a button at the
bottom of the alert to switch to multiple
choice input mode.
Prototypes
Randomizer
Correct
•
Upon unlocking an app with the correct answer,
students may additionally opt into the
Randomizer which will randomly add pop quiz
questions into their app sessions. A missed
randomizer question will lock the user out of the
app. This can be a fun and or frustrating
experience and give the user more of a pop quiz
feel. App locks only last 5 minutes and students
can wait it out or opt out of the lock at any time
through the settings in the Pop Lang app.
•
To balance out the negative feedback of Pop
Lang, upon getting a Correct answer a quiz taker
will receive a grace period for using distracting
apps. Users can receive up to an hour per quiz
and twelve hours per day
Prototypes
•PopLang.com is where students and
teachers can create additional quizzes.
Students can also check their progress
and study quizzes without taking any
of them. Students can take quizzes
from the Website as well. Teachers can
check individual students’ progress
and see the class’s average score. This
can help teachers see where most
students are struggling and what areas
to concentrate on.
Testing
• To get user feed back for Pop Lang, a series of field studies took place at
the college campus of University of Central Florida in a booked board
room.
• The criteria for testers called for currently enrolled UCF students
between the ages 18 and 25.
• During this survey process students were asked to answer a series of
questions on paper based on study habits, difficulty of studying and
strengths in comprehending languages.
• Questions included single responses, binary responses, and Likert
Scales.
• Institutional review board rules were followed with anonymous
answers.
Results
• All of the results were calculated and stored digitally. Of thirty responses the
average age of the surveyors were of twenty one years of age. No one thought
that learning a new language was very easy but the average on a scale of 1-5
was a 2.5. The most popular language to learn was Spanish while 43% of
students said social media is distracting while studying. It was also found that
more students preferred studying digitally. 80% of students showed an
interest for a language tutoring app while only 36% of students said they
would not like to use an app that could lock you out of social media. The ratio
between impact of posted scores on social media were 14:15 with 15 saying it
would motivate them to score higher on tests. The most popular choice for
positive feed back for completing a quiz would be a ranking system to track
mastery.
Charts
Charts Cont.
Current Status/Future
• The Pop Lang App is still in post production. After collecting results we must
consider a better tactic of gamification to attract students. The locking of apps
might be too harsh of a concept to market to students. It was found that
students would be most excited to have physical prizes pertaining to things
such as store discounts and cash prizes. More testing will have to take place
explaining the turning off of the lock features, the PopLang.com website
where students and teachers can create additional quizzes and more ways to
improve the app.
• In the future we hope to get Pop Lang published for free on the app store and
google paly store. From there we will keep pushing out monthly updates and
bug fixes as needed and collecting reviews and error reports.