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December 11, 2020

December 2020 Product Update - Freeform Point System, Navigation Redesign, and Plans for 2021

Unlocking Student Motivation with Gameful Learning

Instructors everywhere face the same uphill climb: getting students to participate meaningfully—especially in online classes. Despite your best efforts, traditional discussion forums can feel more like boxes to check than places for real learning. What’s the antidote? For many educators, the answer is gameful learning.

What is Gameful Learning?

Gameful learning isn’t about turning your classroom into an arcade. It’s about applying the elements of games—clear goals, meaningful choice, and immediate feedback—to academic environments. Platforms like Yellowdig use points, badges, and accolades to recognize real contributions, making participation feel rewarding, not obligatory.

Why Gameful Elements Spark Engagement

Why do students respond so well to this approach? Because gameful mechanics tap into motivation in ways that rote assignments can’t. When students earn points for thoughtful posts or insightful replies, they're encouraged to dig deeper and share experiences. A little friendly competition doesn’t hurt, either—leaderboards spark engagement and help shy students ease into participation.

Yellowdig’s Approach: More Than Just Points

Yellowdig’s platform is built around the idea that engagement should be authentic, not forced. Points aren’t given for empty “I agree” comments, but for contributions that spark conversation and critical thinking. Students can curate their posts with articles or videos that interest them and receive recognition when others interact with their content. This approach fosters intrinsic motivation—students participate because they want to, not because they have to.

Real Results in Real Classrooms

Instructors using Yellowdig consistently report stronger participation and deeper discussion. One faculty member noted that “seventy-five percent of student questions get answered by their peers,” freeing up their time to tackle more advanced topics. Students say they look forward to checking new posts, sharing resources, and earning recognition for meaningful contributions.

Tips for Making Gameful Learning Work

  1. Set Clear Expectations: Let students know how points are earned and celebrate thoughtful interaction, not just frequency.
  2. Offer Meaningful Feedback: Use accolades and comments to highlight particularly insightful posts.
  3. Encourage Creativity: Remind students they can use links, visuals, or even short videos to make their posts stand out.
  4. Foster Healthy Competition: Leaderboards and weekly challenges can energize participation and keep momentum going.

The Takeaway

Gameful learning turns participation from a chore into an opportunity for discovery and community. With the right design, recognition, and tools, you’ll see students take more ownership of their learning—unlocking not just better engagement, but genuine excitement for the subject.
Ready to see how gameful learning can transform your course? Try out Yellowdig and join a thriving community that believes learning should be as rewarding as it is rigorous.

The Yellowdig team has been listening to user feedback and diligently working to improve the Yellowdig Engage platform. To ensure a consistent experience for our instructors and students, we have waited until after most semesters end to release our biggest improvements.

We are very excited to tell you about all of the changes that have been released or will be very soon that our dev team has been working so hard on! Be sure to read to the end to see the big plans we have in store for Q1!

Freeform Point System for Co-Curricular Virtual Classrooms

Although we are waiting on some big releases later this month, one that you may notice available in some communities now is the Freeform Point System. The Freeform Point System enables more co-curricular and open-enrollment use cases. Take a look below for a quick walk through of this new point setting option.

Other Recent Releases:

  • Network Graph Feature to show how community member are connected. This feature helps to identify engaged and at risk students

  • Point displays in the My Participation page use cumulative point earnings and visualize points so that students don’t perceive they are “losing points” at the weekly rollover (additional pending changes to the point display are also coming once classes end)

Navigation Redesign:

Released on 12/22/20, this redesign is to make Yellowdig Engage more user friendly, to improve the look and feel of the platform, and to improve the overall user experience on Engage.

  • Context-dependent left-navigation menu that changes depending on the central content page

  • Global navigation menu moved to left-hand column (across the top in mobile) and is accessible in all pages

    • Messages are now readily accessible in the global navigation menu

    • In a community the create button and search/sort/filter options are always accessible on the right wherever you happen to be in the feed

      • Right-hand column to provide supplemental functionality for each page (e.g., a “trending topics” module for communities is being developed)

      • Easily view weekly or monthly points, comments, and reactions in the new “Facts” widget.

        • Home screen to allow finding of unseen content, easy access to communities, display of various metrics, and access to community discovery through institutional networks (plans to incorporate more organization-wide features and branding)

          • Improved network queries that ensure a student’s current location within a network does not create problems for them easily navigating to their communities in other parts of the organizational network.

Interface Improvements:

          • Expected to release by 12/23/20, we hope these improvements make your use of our platform even more seamless.

            • Editor changes that make @ mentions, hashtags, and emojis work better

            • Topic selector improvements and improved interface around “topics required” and the warnings seen if students are not using them

Very Soon:

            • Math keyboard by MathLive for easier use in STEM courses

            Editor’s note: the Math Keyboard released in February 2021 and you can learn about it here: https://www.yellowdig.co/post/yellowdig-product-update-latex-editor

            Thank you for supporting us as we continue to learn and grow! We can’t wait to hear your feedback on the new updates.

            • Originally published on 12/17/2020 and updated on 4/28/2021 for final release date information.

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