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Fresh perspectives, proven strategies, and stories from real Yellowdig classrooms.
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The Coverage Gap: The Most Important Metric in Online Education Few are Talking About

There’s a number I’ve been obsessing over lately. It’s called Community Coverage. And it’s deceptively simple. It measures the average percentage of their classmates that each student actually interacts with — through posts, comments, mentions, or reactions. Not who enrolled. Not who logged in. How much of the community each student is actually touching. Think […]
If Students Have Something to Say, Let Them Talk : A Yellowdig Story

Dr. Scott StandiferSouthern California University of Health Sciences   Challenge: Traditional discussion boards feel structured and predictable. Students complete prompts, but rarely explore ideas beyond them. The human moment “This is how I kind of envision a discussion board, as a sort of stair step of knowledge. At the end of the course, we end […]
When Students Turn to Each Other First : A Yellowdig Story

Dr. Kevin Carr University of Michigan   Challenge: Students defaulted to instructor answers or external tools instead of learning through each other. The human moment “They can ask their peers, and they get a much better and more interesting response, and they’re more part of a community through that.” — Kevin Carr Dr. Carr teaches […]
Latest at Yellowdig
Yellowdig
Want a Yellowdig Community that doesn’t suck? Follow our best practices.

In 2020, we created a composite Community Health metric that captures four key dimensions of student engagement and achievement. Along the way, we confirmed something we already knew: instructors who use many of our best practices have Communities that perform significantly better than instructors who use fewer. Over the past 3 years, we’ve continued to […]
Latest at Yellowdig
Yellowdig
To Cheat or Not to Cheat: Part 1

Highlights: Part 1: AI Use is a Symptom, Not the Cause The Fraud Triangle and the Necessary Conditions for Cheating Self-Determination as a Salve for Reducing Opportunity, Rationalization, and Pressure Part 2 In Part 1 of this blog, I introduce these concepts and their application to motivation and academic cheating. Part 2 will soon follow, […]
Case Study
Gamification Is the Secret Weapon of Remote Learning

Case Study with Carolyn Siccama, Ed.D. The University of Vermont Instructional Designer One piece of advice from Dr. Siccama to fellow Yellowdig instructors: “Be willing to reconsider your notions of online interaction.” How Dr. Siccama Uses Yellowdig: Between Summer 2018 and Summer 2019, Dr. Carolyn Siccama integrated Yellowdig into 7 online graduate courses, 5 online […]
A Student Perspective
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives: Measuring Their Impact on Student Belonging

In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, the emphasis on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives has grown significantly. Campuses across the globe are striving to create environments where all students feel a sense of belonging, regardless of their background, race, or identity. In this blog, we’ll delve into the key aspects of EDI initiatives, […]
A Student Perspective, Student Success
Addressing Higher Ed's Dropout Rate by Enhancing Academic Quality and Belonging

In his recent blog, The Crisis of Belonging in Higher Education, Shaunak Roy addressed the value that technology can bring to issues of loneliness and belonging in learners’ lives throughout the learning life cycle. Done correctly, he argues, technology can bring consistency and quality coupled with deep personalization to online and hybrid learning at a […]
Yellowdig
Yellowdig Connect and Succeed Community Management Strategies

Highlights: Expectations Getting Started Prepare Your Community for Launch Keeping Your Community Going Expectations: Yellowdig communities can provide a vibrant space for your audience to interact, network, help each other, promote your objectives and events, and provide resources. However, to achieve these results, it’s important to note that Connect and Succeed communities are quite different […]
Yellowdig
Yellowdig's Community of Inquiry: Scaling Proven Pedagogy for Better Outcomes

Education 3.0 is the movement that acknowledges we cannot simply continue with the tried and true methods of yesterday, but we also cannot throw technology at education and expect better outcomes. We must listen to the needs of our modern learners and adapt our pedagogy and teaching methods for this new era of learning. Yellowdig’s […]
Yellowdig
A Q & A on Shifting from Prompts to Topics

I worked as an instructor teaching online communication classes for more than a decade and can remember designing courses and putting in hours to come up with the “right” discussion question(s) each week that tied to weekly outcomes. I was creative and asked students to connect course ideas to their own personal examples. Through the […]
Co-Curricular Uses
Education 3.0: The University of the Future is Now

Just what is Education 3.0 ? As a complete vision, Education 3.0 includes a virtual campus community network that delivers greater engagement, deeper and more reflective learning, higher persistence and completion rates, greater faculty satisfaction and effectiveness, and cradle-to-grave support services for all involved. Today, happily, we have the technological tools and the knowledge to […]
Yellowdig
Tuning Topics

Are you ready to create topic tags for a Yellowdig Community and don’t know where to start? Start by answering these questions. What do I want my learners to have conversations about in the Yellowdig Community? How do I make sure they are having conversations about course relevant topics without giving a prompt? First start […]
AI
The AI horse is out of the barn: How we approach it now will determine whether it hurts us.

Generative AI systems like ChatGPT, recently made available by OpenAI, are a fascinating use of emerging technology that has captured the world’s attention. Search instances for “AI” peaked at an all-time high in December 2022 as a direct result of conversations about that system (trends.google.com). It’s not just the “tech nerds” that know about this […]
Yellowdig
Cultivating a Faculty Community within Yellowdig

Why Yellowdig? At the University of Central Florida (UCF), our division supports faculty and students by leveraging technology, practices, and innovation in online learning. In alignment with UCF’s 2027 strategic plan, we strive to investigate and pilot new technologies with our faculty and students. While searching for a way to improve online student engagement through […]
Student Success
How to Increase Student Success and Unlock the Door to Purposeful Lifelong Learning

The assessment of prior experiential learning began to go mainstream in the early 1970’s with the creation of CAEL, led by Dr. Morris Keeton. Today, after more than 50 years of collecting information and conducting research on the assessment of prior learning, we know that experiential learning, as well as other learning done outside of academic circles, […]

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