Frequently asked questions

Duologue is a learning platform built on guided dialogue — designed to develop critical thinking, reasoning, and the confidence to engage with knowledge independently. Rather than giving learners answers, it asks questions that help them find answers for themselves, adapting to each person's level and pace.

Most platforms deliver content. Duologue develops thinking. Where others provide explanations and answers, Duologue poses questions calibrated to where the learner is — identifying gaps, prompting reasoning, and guiding rather than telling. The result is genuine understanding, not surface familiarity.

Duologue is the product of a founding collective — City St George's, Dr Timo Hannay and Dr Tom Chatfield, alongside strategic partners for each module: Sage Publishing for critical thinking, Raspberry Pi Foundation for AI literacy and ethics, Wolfram for computational thinking for problem solving, and Bond & Coyne for platform development and branding. The pedagogical design for critical thinking and AI literacy and ethics is led by Dr Tom Chatfield, Oxford-educated philosopher and author of the SAGE textbook Critical Thinking. Duologue is is not a startup with investors. It is a shared intellectual project built by people who care deeply about learning.

No — and that's a design principle, not a disclaimer. Duologue is built to complement human teaching, not replace it. It handles foundational skill-building so that lecturers can focus on what only they can provide: discussion, mentorship, and the kind of feedback that genuinely shapes thinking.

Yes. Duologue is in active pilot with founding partner institutions. We are currently onboarding new institutional partners for the 2026–27 academic year. Get in touch to find out what a pilot would look like for your organisation.

You have a conversation with Duologue about the topic you're studying. Rather than explaining things to you or giving you answers, it asks you questions — probing your understanding, surfacing assumptions, and guiding you to reason through ideas yourself. The more you use it, the better it understands how you think and what you need next.

It won't — and that's the point. Duologue is designed to build your ability to think, not to do your thinking for you. If you ask for the answer directly, it will offer a prompt, a reframe, or a question that helps you find it yourself. It can clarify and give examples, but it won't bypass the reasoning process.

No. Your conversations are confidential and are never shared with lecturers or other students. Tutors can see aggregated, anonymised cohort data — which concepts are landing, which aren't — but not individual sessions.

No. Duologue is an approved learning tool designed to develop understanding, not bypass it. It will not write essays, produce assessments, or complete work on your behalf. If your institution has specific policies on technology use in assessment, those still apply — but using Duologue to develop your thinking is exactly what it is designed for.

Duologue supports 100+ languages, with voice-to-text input available. It is designed so that no learner is shut out by language confidence or prior knowledge — the platform adapts to wherever you are, not where it expects you to be.

Get in touch via the contact form. We'll set up a conversation to understand your institution, your learners, and what you're hoping to achieve — and work out what a pilot would look like from there. Most pilots begin with one module across one cohort.

Most institutions are up and running within a few weeks. Duologue integrates with your existing VLE and single sign-on — students log in with their existing university credentials, with no separate account or onboarding required.

Duologue integrates with Canvas, Moodle, and Blackboard, as well as custom SSO setups. If you use a different system, get in touch and we'll work through the options with you.

Yes. Publishers and institutions with existing content or IP can deploy it through Duologue's dialogue layer. Your expertise becomes a living, adaptive learning experience rather than a static resource. This is developed in close collaboration with the Duologue team.

Duologue is built on the Socratic method — one of the most rigorously evidenced approaches to developing critical thinking in educational research. Our pilot data from City St George's is in active evaluation, and we are committed to publishing outcomes as the evidence base grows. We are happy to share what we have in a conversation.

Duologue collects name, email address, course enrolment, and interaction data — the conversations and activity within the platform. This data is used to personalise the learning experience and track progress. It is not sold, shared with third parties, or used for purposes beyond the platform.

All data is hosted on AWS EU infrastructure, with appropriate safeguards for any international transfers. Full details are available in the platform's privacy notice.

Account and interaction data is retained for 13 months after your last activity, then deleted or anonymised. You can request deletion at any time by contacting duologue@sgul.ac.uk.

No. Student conversation data is never used to train models — not Duologue's own systems, and not any third-party models. Aggregated, anonymised data may be used for pedagogical research and platform improvement, but individual conversations remain strictly confidential.

Yes. Students can request deletion of their data at any time by contacting duologue@sgul.ac.uk. Requests are processed in line with GDPR requirements.