Engagement from an Instructional Designer Perspective [Learner Engagement Summit]

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 0:07
Hello, welcome to our session engagement from instructional design your perception perspective. I am joined by four wonderful instructional designers and I will give them some time to introduce themselves Jen.

Jen Warner 0:22
Hey everyone, my name is Jen Warner. I'm an Instructional Designer at Arizona State University. I work in Mary Lou Fulton teacher college, and I technically am a senior instructional designer that focuses on learning technologies. Thanks, Jan Brooke. Hi there.

Brooke D'Adamo 0:42
Like Jen. I am also an instructional designer at Arizona State University in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 0:50
Thanks, Brooke and Holly.

Holly Owens 0:53
Hi, everyone. My name is Holly Owens, and I'm an Instructional Designer at Amazon pharmacy. But I am speaking from an instructional design perspective in my role as an adjunct instructor with the Graduate School of Technology at Torrey University, very excited to talk to all of you.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 1:09
Thank you. And last but not least, Ray, would you like to introduce yourself?

Ray Yao 1:13
Okay, I'm Ray Yao I'm an instructional designer at Fort Hays State University, Hays Kansas. And I'm really excited to join this panel session. And I have been in this field, like for 716 years. So I really like I want to like, enjoy this session to talk with you guys. And you know, share my perception and ideas. Yeah, thank you.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 1:40
Wonderful, wonderful things. Okay, we're gonna jump right in and get started. So let's just start with Jen. So in your role as an instructional designer, Jen, how are you improving student engagement through instructional design, considering the issues and the trends we see in student engagement?

Jen Warner 2:00
Yeah, so we, we do a lot of things for student engagement in our courses, a lot of things that we do a we try to do, focus on personalized learning, as well as building the student communities. So the student communities are a big part of our of our courses. And we try, or we we utilize Yellowdig, to build those communities in a number of different ways to, you know, from all sorts of, you know, just open communities for our, for our courses, to engage how they like all the way through to the normal use case of graded instruction.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 2:43
Great, thanks. So Holly, as an instructional designer, also, we focus on creating that complete educational experience. How would you say? Or how do you feel that Yellowdig reaches that goal to create that complete educational experience,

Holly Owens 3:02
I've really feel it's a part of that, that goal of like you're saying to create that complete learning experience, because discussion boards have become like a checklist item to students, and I was looking for a solution to make it more of a community based activity. And you know, when you're in a course, there's a teacher, there's learners, you know, the whole ecosystem is there. But sometimes you can feel disconnected from the space, especially when you're learning online. So Yellowdig was my solution for that. And Yellowdig has really allowed us the opportunity not only to, for me to share content and ancillary items are related to my content, but it's also allow my students to meet each other and form deeper connections. And really, the sense of community lasts beyond the classroom, I see students going back into Yellowdig, following the semester to go back to reference reef sources were connect with someone that they've engaged with during the semester, because they're matriculating through a program. So really does encompass this whole sense of like, community in in your course and making sure that people are connecting on those deeper levels.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 4:09
Yeah, great. So community connecting deeper relationships and learning. So kind of piggybacking off that same concept of that, you know, complete exception or educational experience. So how do you and how do you feel that Yellowdig encourages, like really the cognitive and social presence? Jen, I know you've done some research with that as well. I have

Jen Warner 4:34
Yeah, like focus on one of the focuses of my PhD research is on that social presence within the classroom in the in the cognitive presence that brings that or that kind of brings that to the forefront. So what what we have found is that students who have the students who have that stronger social presence in the community and more of that centrality ie connection, they can get that through their student community. And then they have a higher cognitive presence within the class and you see a much better, you know, correlation to their, you know, their ability to answer the questions correctly or to gain more information from the content that's presented.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 5:21
Right, right. There's a reason there's three aspects, right of that complete educational experience, the cognitive, the teaching, and the social. Thank you. So

Ray Yao 5:33
I just want to add that, I think, in Yellowdig, they provide several truths, like a student can add their reactions, they use actually emoji, I really like that. Like, I like that, how is my colleague have that image to add? Also, Megan student can add, like, hashtag, you know, to care to kinda like a guide to their conversation. And also they can have all your comments. And when they create a poster, they can use a photo and they can record a video, or they can do like a joke or something. And yeah, I think that like to share some documents or results. And that's really encouraged the free conversation in like, why not? Why the different ways for students to engage in, you know, the community presence, like a hug, the when they record the videos like that when they talk like in videos, and they will be able to freely express themselves. So talking a little bit involved, as in, that's very important.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 6:37
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. So I'm Brooke, we've talked about Yellowdig being a change in mindset. Can you expand on that a little bit? And have you supported faculty and instructors? And what kind of feedback and anyone that would want to chime in? Have you received from other faculty members? Or if you've used Yellowdig, as an instructor,

Brooke D'Adamo 7:03
from the students? Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. I think one of the main ways that we are working to support faculty through this mind shift of well, using discussion boards, as Holly was saying, kind of from the the generic one response to pair replies, it's worth this many points is we're shifting to more of a student community that's built through topics and posts that are important to them, and helps them achieve the course goals. So I think one way we're doing that is that we're having the conversations with faculty early and often and creating resources. Yellowdig has a lot of them on the website that help teach faculty and students through short videos, through some articles about what Yellowdig is purpose is and how it can be used in the course. And what we do is we create almost like a Yellowdig toolkit for faculty within the our LMS. So that they can become familiar with the tool and guide them towards picking Yellowdig for a specific purpose, such as reevaluating the prompts, they would normally ask in a discussion forum, and kind of changing them to more aligned with the student community that is working towards course goals, which is more open ended and more student focus. And I would say those are two of the main ways that we're supporting our faculty, and thus their students through the Yellowdig mindset.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 8:32
Right, right. Anyone else like to chime in about the mindset?

Holly Owens 8:36
Yeah, definitely, I feel like Yellowdig has taken the pressure off of the instructor to actually come up with the discussion topics, and set it back on the students not that they're, you know, they're being pressured to do things that they normally don't do. Because in normal everyday classes in a classroom, you're having conversations surrounding the content, or, you know, hopefully, they're going to a coffee shop and talking about our content if it's really good. But I really feel like it's taking the pressure off of me to constantly remind students that they need to participate. And on the other side of that, too, the way that Yellowdig is set up, if students don't participate in one, you know, scoring period, they can kind of make it up and another scoring period. So if things are going on with them personally, I feel like it also offers that flexibility and just dealing with life. So I really like that from the instructor perspective. And at the beginning of the semester, when I say, Okay, we're going to use Yellowdig. First of all, like, what is Yellowdig? And then I'm gonna say, but you're going to drive the conversations are like you're not posting every week, you're not telling us what they're talking about. I'm like, No, this is going to be something and after a couple of weeks, it does take a couple of weeks, they really start getting into some interesting conversation and sharing resources that have things that I didn't know about and I get to learn to which is fantastic, especially from the younger generations about what's going on in because I teach instructional design courses. What's One element that world that I'm not familiar with, so definitely taking the pressure off the faculty, and also the adaptability to just dealing with things that happen in everyday life.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 10:09
Right, right. And, you know, really with him adding to the content, right? Because, of course, by bringing in a lot of things that are happening, real life situations, and much more motivating, I would think you see from instructors and students, they're, they're having some fun with it for sure. So, okay, let's say

Ray Yao 10:29
that either something like lab work or with the faculty I found now 730 A day performing different family has, they have different personal style and personality, personality, like when working with the family, and most of them they will, they will provide like a lease or topics and a list of questions. So students can like for each module, they will have a list of topics are crazy to think about to respond to that. I think that also encourage the flexibility. So that as in the like a fairly I walk away, they don't feel like a pressure to come up with those topics or questions as in that's kind of like, for them too easy to come up with a list of questions instead of like, just choose one or two to focus on. Yeah, just want to say that. Thank you.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 11:17
Thank you. Yes, for sure. So Ray, yeah. Can you touch a little bit on RSI, and how you support faculty engaging students?

Holly Owens 11:30
Okay, yeah.

Ray Yao 11:31
Good night. Now we are at our university, we really want to I cannot emphasize this, I say this concept, because we want to encourage the substantive interaction and regular interactions with students. Like a Yellowdig Moser, Pa maybe most important part is about like a collaborative learning law students guide the conversation. Let's do students cannot engage in interaction with each other like to share their ideas or share results by the faculty can you engage in beyond this, I'm also referred to the foodies interaction with students. So the 30 can provide eyes and like they can provide a list of topics, and the list of questions posted to respond. Or they can provide the camera they can put those discussion prompts on Blackboard, or cameras or the like other learning management systems, and Yellowdig Pentacles look well, like virtual office or announcements or some like a very spectating on Yellowdig. So students cannot hear from the faculty, then also fair to come who Adela accolades, like some very interesting accolades. And like, wow, when I work with the faculty in the modern language, she actually come up with accolades in Spanish. So like less, you can just, you can engage in discussion, also in Spanish for the whole time. I think that's, that's great. And also fairly if they want to, they can create a sample post at the beginning of the semester, like examples for each module. So the student can see kind of what you've bet on them. And they can, of course they can. They can kind of like mirror posts, like as they like, maybe they talk about their holidays, or their hobbies or something that's also encouraging. Yeah. Thank you.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 13:27
Thank you. Yeah. And I like to just kind of connect to that a little bit, you know, as instructional designers. We're also and I'll say we, because I was an Instructional Designer for a few years. We're also what they call learning experience designers, right? And how would you connect to that title, and connect the use of Yellowdig to really be more of a learning experience designer, as well as, as an instructional designer, anyone like to expand on that?

Holly Owens 14:00
I can expand on that a bit. I think. I think one of the things that we bring to the table as instructional designers or learning experience designers is we understand the learning process and how everything comes together and work psychologically, in order to provide a meaningful learning experience. And that's what Yellowdig has provided in my courses. It's my, my content has become more meaningful to my students and to myself, and I really feel like through learning experiences because I'm a former public educator, I teach you know, adjunct courses I adjunct teach courses I'm, I'm an ID by trade, I'm an ID every day. So all those experiences really come into my class. And, you know, Yellowdig itself allows me to share beyond what just the content is I have to cover I can share my experiences at Amazon. I can share my experiences in the higher ed world I can share, you know, things that are happening like I see articles and I'm sharing I see my students sharing maybe possible jobs for them. So it really becomes a space of sort of crowdsourcing. So it's like a, it's like a real lived experience of what's happening in the real world. So then that LX D really becomes a priority in figuring out how to use the community. And it kind of just happens naturally and organically when you're using tools like Yellowdig.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 15:22
Right? Oh, yeah, naturally, organically. And really the comfort for the students to feel like they are truly involved in a community of learning to experience learning, right? So full circle,

Holly Owens 15:37
yeah. And they want, they want real world stuff, they want tangible things. So that those tangible things are out there on in the Yellowdig space, and they can always go back to it and reference it. But people are bringing in like, it's, I don't know how many times I've heard from my learners that professors are using outdated materials. Now with Yellowdig is current stuff that's being shared out on that on the platform, and people are just absorbing, and they're taking taking that stuff, and they're applying it to their current roles. Right,

Jen Warner 16:05
we find, we find to in our classes that it's, it's that connection. So with an asynchronous class, you often students get lost in the in the process, you know, they don't, they don't, it's hard to push that engagement, you know, it's hard to, for them to even want to, I mean, when everybody's going at a certain or different times, and trying to figure out what's going on. And it really gives, especially with the way that we design the courses, we have, like our prompts, or our you know, ideas for our discussion topics and things like that come from our Canvas pages, or LMS pages, and then they're carried into by the students into the Yellowdig community that we don't do. Like the posts in the community itself. So students, kind of it's it's kind of a interesting, like telephone game as they interpret what that means in their posts on to the community. But it creates a really interesting set of communications and set a set of conversations that happens for our students and creates that connection.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 17:09
Right. And one of the sessions I was joining in the this conference, and instructor said they're engaged, you know, emotionally, they know each other differently, right, because they do have that community, that safe community that has been created.

Brooke D'Adamo 17:27
I agree. And I think one of the things that Jen and I see a lot with our Well, our awesome faculty is that they, because there's this emotional and social connection, of course, along with the cognitive connection, they are looking through their communities, as Holly was saying, and they're seeing what topics or themes are coming up frequently. And then they're rearranging kind of their discussion prompts or ideas about what they want the students to discuss based on what the students need in real time, depending on whatever that time zone, maybe. And they're putting out certain posts or certain topics that are related to what students need. And I think that's critical to Yellowdig being a supportive tool for all of those connections.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 18:13
All right, thank you. Okay, we are moving right along. We do have a question in the q&a, I think we're gonna go ahead and answer this, or I'll bring it to our panel here we can answer live? How did fella did use learning analytics to inform instructional designers, learning experience designers, as someone in the out in a learning design field, I'm wondering how content can be enhanced through analytics that are gathered?

Jen Warner 18:43
Sure, well, I can speak to that a little bit with we have, we have one or one faculty in particular that uses the analytics all the time, and we and he focuses on it, to to build out his, his assignments, every, you know, whenever he has a sunset meeting at the end of a course, he does, you know, he pulls up these analytics and looks at it. And so the way that that community is set up is through the topics, you know, we go through and they they tag the topics throughout the course. And if there's a topic that really didn't get a lot of tags, then he goes back and he looks at the, you know, the experience and the posts that the students were having, and if they weren't really engaged with it, then he changes the topic. It's, it's a really interesting thing to see to see that pivot quickly. Because, you know, when you get into, especially with asynchronous lesson design, we all know that the sometimes when that you know, so when the course is done, signed, sealed, delivered, then it doesn't get touched again for a while or it doesn't, you know, you don't get to look at that content, again, that just kind of lives in perpetuity until somebody takes it over again and says, Hey, this needs to be looked at, but um, but it's created a really interesting or ganache, you know, a learning experience for the students in that course. Which is something that if you're a face to face instructor you have that ability to do you can change things on the fly. When you're an online, asynchronous instructor, you don't always get that information. So it's it's created that kind of experience in an online asynchronous class, which is really interesting. idea. Yeah,

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 20:24
that's great. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see, we do have another question in the chat. Do you typically provide one grade? I think Polly, they referenced to you for the cumulative discussion experience for students. This way, as Holly mentioned, students may opt to dig deeper at different times when they have more time and feel they have more to contribute.

Holly Owens 20:49
Yeah, I definitely, I do connect it to the gradebook. But I also do my due diligence as an instructor to make sure that the students are participating actively, and I do remind them to participate actively. And I, you know, I really love the point system that Yellowdig has set up just for the gamified instant gratification that really, you know, the students want. I think it's important as an instructor to go back in and you know, kind of gauge because you know, technology, I love technology AG, we host a podcast about technology. But sometimes you have to go in and make sure that the the points match what the participation is, and Yellowdig does a great job of that. One thing that just to be cognizant of is when you're using those points, that it kinds of each period, it just changes so that they might see fluctuation just make them aware of that at the beginning of semester, because they're like, why did they go down, I just did all this participating or I was highly engaged. The point I was trying to make is that it's flexible enough that students don't have to participate, like say, a discussion board, or book was often seen the one in the to respond to to, they can have an off week, they can have something happen, and they can come back strong next week. So really, that flexibility is what I was trying to emphasize. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I decide, you know, who's participated and done a great job and met expectations. And you know, who hasn't? But Yellowdig has really streamlined some of that, for me, for sure. Right.

Jen Warner 22:19
Along with that, Holly, the new features of like the merging, being able to merge the merge grading periods. That has been a game changer for our faculty.

Holly Owens 22:29
Thank you for I forgot about that. But thank you for mentioning that.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 22:32
Yeah. And Brooke, are you a little excited about that?

Brooke D'Adamo 22:36
Just lightly, I think some of our faculty were so excited. And on our end on Jen and our team, we're using it for the first time.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 22:46
Yeah, nice, nice. And what they're talking about there is we you can now merge periods. So if you have a spring break or Christmas or you know, you have time off and you want to merge two periods together, you can now do that, which is a new feature within probably the last month or so. So yeah, thanks. Thanks for bringing that up as well. Thank you. Okay, so can you share your experience with yellow digs integration into your LMS? And how has this made you and your instructor instructors lives easier? And more enjoyable? So like, is there fun being had with Yellowdig? Out there? All you want to start with that? Yeah,

Holly Owens 23:27
definitely. I want to give somebody else a chance, because I'm just gonna take all the questions and have fun in them. And but yes, it is so much fun for me. And you know, all the things we're doing in real life like right when we're out on LinkedIn whirled around on social media, Yellowdig emulates that and mimics that which is like, it's so it's so easy to use. And it literally took me less than 15 minutes to set up my first community, everything was there for me. It talks, it had all the information about how to get started. And I'm like, I don't have to spend hours and hours thinking about discussion board posts, or what are the expectations for discussion boards? Or how am I going to grade those? When that's so subjective, you know, it's all there in Yellowdig for you, and there's so many different opportunities. And yes, it's fun. You can share gifts you can share, you can like it you can, you know, share different emojis. We like sharing videos. It's a lot of it's actually It's tons of fun for the instructor. And like I said before, it really takes the pressure off you. And the one thing I love about Yellowdig is it since it's integrated into a Torah, we use Canvas, since it's integrated into our system, it the students aren't going out somewhere else. They don't have to log in anywhere else. They log in SSO into our portal and they're right there. They click on the Yellowdig link and they're in to the community. So it's just it's just so nicely integrated. Literally I'm not kidding. I'm not just saying that in Yellowdig not pay me royalties for Same that 15 minutes. I was it was, it was done and I was ready to go.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 25:07
Yeah, anyone else want to share their experience about the integration and how that all went?

Ray Yao 25:12
Yeah, I can share some experience about like, now we are using Blackboard Ultra. So we can add the cost links to the yellow Diego like past discussion on yellow T like a bad community, we can put each module that really makes it easy, like Susan can go to that module and everything in there that they can just engage that they can click that link to go to a Yelp good discussion in that module. That's really his user friendly, I think. And also I agree with Holly is Yellowdig is very easy to set up. Like I often I work with a faculty at the beginning, which is a provider like a detail the duration for the for the Yellowdig how to use it, and then just voted they can send have the community themselves is very, very easy to set up. And all the points system is obvious. Like now I, my preference is freeform. Freeform points, the system is really like a student just cure accumulate points as they go this just like you know, play a game. And also, as Holly said that the social media look, it's really great, like a student can just read the post very easily. And they can just, you know, scroll down to them to read all the posts. And they can cannot like a speaker freely and fair, they can record they can go in check maybe every week or every two weeks, they are going to check to see what's going on, what's the conversation about so they can maybe add the accolades or add a reaction? That's easy. Just add the emoji reaction. Yeah, that's Yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah, you have

Holly Owens 26:56
so much customization, opportunity inside of Yellowdig, you don't have to stick with the topics, you can make your own topics. And like Ray was saying earlier, you can, you can get you have the hashtag Oh, it's just, it's just a fun place to be. And it's fun to learn there and also to share there.

Jen Warner 27:14
Yeah, I know, in our, in our experience, we have I mean, in our, in our office, we released probably between two and 300 classes a semester. So we ended up using Yellowdig. And Yellowdig is probably one of our most widely used tools, really, I mean, it's one of those that that, like I said, we it took us a little while to get to get all of our materials, you know, and all of our explanations and how this worked. And, and, you know, it took it took a few times for it to really run and get moving. But now that it's up and running, and we've got those tools, and we can plug the you know, tools pages, and we plug those in, throughout the different courses. And it's really interesting to see how different faculty are using that. So we have some that are using it for extra credit, we have some that are using it for a replacement for their discussion board, we have some that are using it as a full replacement for their student community in their classrooms. You know, there's there's 100 different ways that it's being used. So it's kind of interesting to see all the all the creativity that's come from it.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 28:13
So it has changed, like your role in a way or your job, right than what you may have done in the past with discussion boards hasn't not

Jen Warner 28:23
a little bit. Yeah, we discussion boards. It's interesting, because there's always, there's always the give and take with discussion boards, you know, as far as like the integration goes, and you know what functionalities are where we do see that this one does allow a little bit more flexibility as far as students to be able to get used to, especially students who are used to that idea of just free, you know, quickly sharing resources. Yellowdig seems to do a much better job or that type of student community does a much better job of that than like a like an LMS discussion board.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 28:57
Right? So have you all had kind of an aha moment, if you will, with with using Yellowdig and creating that student engagement in your courses as an instructional designer? Yeah, I

Ray Yao 29:14
can say something about like, when we use the yellow digger community, it's like students cannot control their learning space. Like they will decide what points they want to get. Like, there's like, they expect you to get like a one sound recordings each week. So that's just out to them, like a 30 won't degrade them. Like fairly just say you need to follow this only rule to get your points, but certainly won't degrade them. Thus you don't just control their points. If they want a more they can post more. They can make more like comments, or they can add a reaction or anything. Yeah. And also, if they want to get others to comment to them, they need to make their post interesting and assaulted, provoking. So that's kind of all just depends on like a big sander. So it's kind of like I think that you promote like a student agent. That's really like what Fenty wants, like a white towel with a family and mentioned like, the benefits of this using yellow deal fair to say, Yeah, I want that. I want that. Yeah, for students, I want them to control their, like, their learning space, I want them to cannot regulate their leather their points. Like they will say, Okay, you get this point just based on you. It's not like in the LMS, like sooner and we will expect that they will get full points. If they just you know, follow the simple requirements. By the Yellowdig. They will have like different points. If your concern to your kids to be able to last you will get less points. Yeah, I think, yeah, that we like that kind of feature. Yeah.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 30:53
Thank you. Okay, yeah, we are going to go to the slide that talks about that opportunity. Being just that with using Yellowdig. And you've really expanded on the opportunity of creating that community. And also just having the students be more of the sage on the stage, if you will, and the instructor or is the guide on the side. And as you work with instructors, it sounds like you have had some positive feedback about that role and how you've experienced that role as a guide on the side. If you want to expand a little bit more on your enjoyment you may have had, or that you've heard from instructors about not some Monday morning grading of of post, but but maybe having their Monday morning coffee and checking in on Yellowdig. So whenever you like to even share any stories that you may want to share that that you've had, or conversations that you've had with instructors about that aspect.

Holly Owens 32:04
I'll share I'm definitely not the the anxious nature of people waiting to the last minute to post on a Sunday evening when it's due. And there's no conversation generated from us 90% Of the students posting last minute, it's just like I said, it becomes a checklist item. And that's not what happens, and Yellowdig. And really, I've had an aha moment or like an eye opening moment, with Yellowdig as the opportunity when my students were sharing, they felt safe in the space to share some things they were experiencing in the public school system. And they were helping each other with resources. And they were in different school districts, they were not in the same school. And they were experiencing similar issues. And they felt really safe to share what was happening with each other. And with me, and also share resources are ways to mitigate the issues that they were experiencing, which I absolutely love, because that space is secure for them and nothing gets shared outside of our class. So that is that is something that you cannot do in regular discussion boards. It does not feel that way. It feels awesome. Inside of a community when that happens with Yellowdig.

Brooke D'Adamo 33:28
I agree, Holly, I've had that experience from not from an instructor point of view, but from even a student point of view, being enrolled in the Yellowdig community and being able and confident and safe enough to share my ID related questions. And like, I'm not sure about this tool. What are your thoughts and you know, I'm getting feedback. And it's almost exciting to open my email and have notifications of someone so replied to your post, this is what they said. And so that was kind of my aha moment starting at ASU and learning this tool was being involved in Yellowdig as a learner, and then getting that experience getting excited about it. And then moving to IDX with Yellowdig. And hopefully, as it's happening for Holly, it's happening for the rest of our instructors as well.

Jen Warner 34:14
Yeah, one thing that we have found to with our instructors is that it's actually allowing them to even step a little bit further outside, you know, when you have the LMS discussion boards, they are it's basically the students just waiting for a reply, you know, to check and see if they got it correct. You know, I mean, that's that's a lot of what happens and we have found that with the way that Yellowdig works in the in the quick responses that the students give and the the ability that to to kind of get into that information. The faculty go into moderate are going to give their own ideas and they're finding that they're the conversations already happening without them prompting it. So they found it better for them to kind of move along and do the the accolades where they can and just kind of sit back and, and enjoy the conversation. So it's been an interesting experience for them.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 35:05
And so rewarding for the instructors and the students, right? Because they have that conversation going on. And they do like we have the accolade verified response that, that lets them know they're right on track. So thank you. Great. So we'll just kind of do around the room type final thoughts, if you will. We're getting close, we have about 10 minutes left. But we do want to save time for any questions that anyone has. And then we'll just kind of go around with some ending thoughts, if you will, if you'd like to share anything that you didn't get to share? Or? Yeah, we'll just kind of ended on that note. So Jen, would you like to share anything?

Jen Warner 35:50
Sure. Yeah. I think the thing to the the kind of final thought on this, that I have come or come to know, with this tool is that it takes a little bit to spin up. But we and we have had many faculty who get a little frustrated at the beginning. And and we work through it. And by the end of the semester, once the student evaluations come in, and, and we have those sunset meetings, they're, they're saying, please leave it in two, do not touch it, you know, keep it in, let's build out even more experiences in our classes with this tool. So it's kind of an interesting thing that it has turned, it has turned that probably one of our most widely requested tools that we have,

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 36:35
right and change, as we know, is a process not an event. Right. And so, and I think you probably all agree that it's a process worth, you know, enjoying as you go through it, and learning as you go through it. So thank you any final thoughts? Right?

Ray Yao 36:51
Yeah, I want to jump on to say is, we are trying to use the yellow digger to cannot commit, like a crater learning community for this car, for this course. So that students can, you know, can build relationships with their peers, like, for example, if they thought about some topics, they're like, maybe three or four, so then they are in etc, they can keep their conversation going, they might have build a friendship, they might just, you know, you've turned that connection out beyond this class. Like, for example, the most online students, they feel alone, your online course, they don't feel connected with other students. So you want to use this tool to like, you know, build that connections, like, we want to see, like, you know, when they connect to Yellowdig, not just a discussion board, like Toby is you can they can connect for you can talk about, like, their favorite movies or something or holidays or something or their plan. Yeah, there's just, we want them to talk freely. And they enjoy this community and consider as their own community, they can help build this strong community. Yeah, that's what we want.

Brooke D'Adamo 38:02
Yes. Thank you. Greg. Do you have any final thoughts? Oh, I saw, I think there's a great question in the QA section there. I thought this was really interesting, because in our space, where I work with Jen, we also work with adult learners who are working through like a job embedded course, where they're student teaching their actual teachers, their superintendents, etc. And they're taking courses with us and enrolling in Yellowdig. And what I've seen in those courses is that the ideas or the topics that you would discuss with learners don't really change that much. They still have a getting to know you. They still want faculty, and professors and superintendents and all these adult learners to share photos of themselves and to open up, but the topics are just more geared towards what they're doing in their jobs, and how they can support each other's with resources is usually what I see with those adult learners.

Holly Owens 39:06
Yeah, yeah, I think I had neglected to mention that my I use Yellowdig in a graduate program. It's all adult learners. It's all like Brooke saying teachers, administrators coming from the public school system and it is just as active as it would be if it was used. And you know, if your Savior is in the K through 12 space, they love it. And again, it mimics what they're doing. And you know, daily life. And for final thoughts for me, I just like to shout out shannock Roy, who is an amazing CEO and founder and created this tool because I don't think without it, i i I get so frustrated with discussion boards, and then I found Yellowdig and I feel so much better. Now that I have this tool incorporate into my classes and I get positive feedback from students about using it and they even want to explore it in their own educational spaces. So I want to give a huge shout out to him and his team for creating such a great tool. And I have felt supported. I've been using it for about two years now from start to finish, I've never felt like I can reach somebody or, you know, it's just this the community Yellowdig itself, the people that work there, they're a huge community, and they developed a great product, and they are emulating what they put out there. So thank you.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 40:26
Thank you. Okay, we do have a drawing. So we have a few more minutes on this.

Brianna Bannach 40:36
Hi, everyone. I'm excited to announce the raffle winner for this session is Nicky Barnes. I will follow up via email, you have won a Yellowdig swag box. So you'll you'll be getting some some fun swag in the mail. I think we do have time for like four more minutes of panel chat. If anyone has any closing thoughts that they didn't get to share, we'd like to, to close with.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 41:04
I just like to say thank you to our panel for such an enjoyable conversation. It really means so much to have all of you here. And thank you for the time that you've spent. Yes, a good group. What a great group.

Brianna Bannach 41:23
And I am hopeful that there'll be joining the Yellowdig community as well. So if you have any questions for them, feel free to send that in the Yellowdig community. Awesome. Any we still have three minutes. Anyone want to say one last nugget of wisdom?

Jen Warner 41:37
I can say, you know, this is something that we offered last time I worked through this panel, too. We did. Brooke and I like I said we we deploy hundreds of instances of Yellowdig in our office. And so you know, we're always happy to to help give advice or help walk through things if you need any. Any question or any questions answered about how would you even begin this process or anything like that, feel free to reach out like so we do this all the time.

Ray Yao 42:10
I just want to mention some very interesting thing about the name or Yellowdig. Because I found out I work with a fairly I mentioned Yellowdig to them, they might might misspell it, they say someone called Yellowdig like separate is towards some like yellow to make a tea as a capitalize. So it's very interesting. I just want to know where this name coming from and what it stands for.

Holly Owens 42:35
Oh, you should listen to my podcast episode because she talked about that. It's a good one. Oh,

Brianna Bannach 42:41
that'd be awesome. Holly, why don't you drop the link? If you have it ready? I will. I will. I will share it somewhere else. But to answer your question, right yellow color of intellect and fun. So that's why yellow is a part of the name. And then dig means to unearth and we want our students to unearth knowledge. And that's dig deeper. That's That's why Shana click that name. Yeah, thank you for prompting that question. I am really grateful for everyone for joining this session. So thank you so much and see you in the future. Thank you. Thank you. It's great.