Primary Audience: Undergraduate, High School, Elementary, and Middle School

Luduan is a next-generation AI-powered learning platform that goes beyond point solutions like toolkits. Built on cutting-edge learning science, it engages students with personalized materials and real-time feedback tailored to their individual needs. For educators, Luduan acts as a powerful AI assistant, automating labor-intensive tasks such as generating level-appropriate content and grading. This frees up valuable time, allowing teachers to focus on high-impact interactions. Luduan also fosters flexible and accessible connections between students and instructors, enabling deeper, more reciprocal engagement. By promoting critical thinking and creativity, Luduan transforms the educational experience for both learners and educators.

LaunchPad Questions

During the LaunchPad, the audience had an opportunity to ask questions about the products. The Tech Center shared those questions with the entrepreneurs and here are the responses. 

What does Luduan mean?

Luduan comes from luduan (甪端), which is the name for a Chinese mythical creature that can (according to legend) speak all human languages.

Is there any specific research on language acquisition that you incorporate into how your platform operates that you’d like to mention?

Since our platform is fundamentally driven by research, there’s a lot of papers and topics that have been involved. Here’s 5:

Noticing Hypothesis (Schmidt 1990)
Incidental Vocabulary Learning (Webb 2008)
Dynamic Assessment (Lantolf & Poehner 2011)
Pragmatic Competence (Kasper & Rose 2002)
Skill Acquisition Theory (DeKeyser 2007)

How is the teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge accounted for in your theoretical framework? Is that part reduced to the 20%?

Yes, that part is in the 20%. The teacher is the one deciding which assignments to assign and tweaking what Luduan creates.

When you say the application would have AI do 80% of the tasks that are “of little value”, what does that mean and what are the tasks that are of little value?

-Creating powerpoints
-Grading multiple choice assignments by hand
-Writing example sentences

These are all tasks that, based on our research and dozens of demos, represent a disproportionate amount of time spent for the value they provide. In the future, we believe AI will take care of these tasks that take up 80% of the time so that teachers can focus on the 20% that truly makes a difference.

What languages are available in Luduan?

Arabic, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), English, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish (LatAm/Spain), Tamil, and Turkish

How do you ensure the AI outputs are actually at the appropriate language level? What is the metric this is based on?

CEFR/ACTFL standards in addition to some retrieval augmented generation (RAG)

How does your platform differ from Diffit AI? What makes your product superior?

We have not thoroughly tested Diffit, but it seems much more generalist and not driven by pedagogy research. We are a platform laser-focused on research-backed language education.

What about the authenticity of the reading passage generated?

In general, our users are happy. However, they always have the ability to tweak assignments or regenerate if needed.

Why would you speed up listening if the goal is language learning?

Totally up to students if they want to do this–some students might want to quickly consume some listening content.

What is the availability of devices (Android/PC/Apple)? Will students have access to these devices outside the classroom or formal environments?

Available on any modern internet-enabled device and yes, users can use the platform anywhere.

Is this a teacher tool or a learner tool? Who provides the content?

It’s both, and the content is generated by AI.

Which language models are behind the app? How is it different from custom GPTs and other apps like magic schools? Which AI powers the role-play?

We cannot disclose the model we are using, but a few key differences are

1. Guardrails built in (custom GPTs do not have actual guardrails and are easily broken)
2. Fine-tuning (we fine-tune our model based on SLA research)

About ethical and responsible AI: is your app sharing any learner data with commercial AI APIs?

No! The only thing we collect is an email, and that is stored in an encrypted database.

Can Luduan generate content tailored to regional variations, such as Taiwan mandarin vs mainland China mandarin?

Yes! It can do this for Chinese and Spanish, and it also can address some dialect differences in the roleplay mode.

If you received venture funding for this program how would you utilize it?

Scaling up–developing features at a faster pace and reaching more schools.

Your listening is listen-to-read. Have you thought about taking away the script?

Great idea! The script is obfuscated when listening assignments are assigned to students.

What kind of prompt will trigger plagiarism?

Asking for a homework or essay to be written

What does the platform look like on the instructor side?

Please feel free to take a look: https://vimeo.com/1001488601

Who are the role play characters? How are they customized by the teacher?

Any character you would like–we have preset scenarios (based on pragmatics research), but you can also enter your own

When a student goes to use the role play feature of Luduan, does the AI draw upon the target language’s cultures to help with intercultural competence?

Yes!

How do your role plays handle/reflect sociolinguistic diversity?

The AI has been specifically prompted to match the described scenario, and we have designed it with effective, equitable pragmatics roleplay activities in mind

When correcting students’ answers, does the app explain why besides providing the correct answers?

Yes! You can click a button to have the AI explain all of the answers in detail

Can your app adjust reading questions based on proficiency level rather than the text itself?

Correct

What is your curriculum based on / what standards is it aligned to?

SLA research
ACTFL
CEFR

How much do you think it will cost?

Our pricing is negotiable based off teachers’ needs, but $10 per student per semester has been our pricing (roughly) for the beta test.

What is the website address?

luduan.ai

Can you use only YouTube links or can you copy any type of video file or website url to input into the dashboard?

We do not support videos as of right now.

Does the app provide corrective feedback?

Yes!

Contact Information

TECH CENTER

1890 East West Road

Moore Hall 256

Honolulu, HI 96822

tech.center@hawaii.edu

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The Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center is funded under a grant from the Institute of International Education (IIE), acting as the administrative agent of the Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO) for The Language Flagship. One should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project P.I.: Dr. Julio C. Rodriguez