Blog

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Student Success, Yellowdig

What We Can Do About Community College Enrollment Declines

Quick facts: 11.8% drop in enrollment for public-two year institutions during the pandemic 53% of students are not ready for undergraduate studies after high school 70% of California students fail to graduate or transfer to a four-year college Community colleges have been facing enrollment problems since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic which has only […]

Yellowdig Community Interaction Strategies

Make sure Yellowdig is not a side-show First and foremost, Yellowdig is designed to be an organic and connected learning community which is used as part of a course in tandem with synchronous sessions (if any) and the LMS. It is not meant to be an isolated part of a course and learners should not […]

What's New in Yellowdig Engage This Fall?

As the semester starts to kick off, that means it’s time to dust off the cobwebs and get back into your Yellowdig Communities! If this is your first time back since the spring or even the fall of last year, you will definitely notice a few changes. Below we highlight some of the most notable […]

News

How Education 3.0 Rethinks the Learning Experience

Everyone at the university level felt the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — from faculty burnout, enrollment dropping, and the sudden chaos of figuring out how to scale online programs to an entire student body with little warning. As students return to in-person classes, the holes in learning models revealed by the pandemic are now […]

News

Education 3.0: Connecting the Learning Experience

In August 2020, I wrote the blog “Is BigTech About to Take Over Higher Education?”. At that time we were in the beginning phases of the COVID pandemic, and the importance of technology in education was becoming more evident as the entire world had moved from in-person to online learning. Since then we have been […]

Instructor Stories

3 Strategies for Instructors to Reduce Grading Time

The education environment constantly changes as learners develop and as we usher in new generations of learners. But with so much constant change, grading remained a stagnant variable in its nature. Despite much rethinking, trials, and tribulations with the grading system, why has it remained unchanged? Traditional grading is easy, convenient, and the norm, so […]

A Student Perspective

Why Most Students Prefer Holistic Learning: Perspectives from Today's Learners

What is Holistic Learning? An unfortunate fault in some modern pedagogy is the disregard for the wants and needs of today’s learners. A proper learning environment should center around both learner and instructor, with both parties working in tandem to create a harmonious experience. One solution is a holistic learning approach, or a “comprehensive approach […]

6 Ways to Use Online Learning Communities to Improve the Academic Experience

Interactions between students and instructors are an important part of any class. Yellowdig allows for flexible student engagement while growing a community with improved learning outcomes. Traditional discussion boards and other constrained social assignments don’t have the same level of expression, creativity, or active conversation. We have been listening to the feedback from our Instructors […]

Latest at Yellowdig

Yellowdig Engage Product Update 5/20

Features > Community owners and admins may now share quick and easy access to their Community via the new Shareable Links feature. Links may now be created on the Share page and given a custom name or a randomly generated name. Shareable links can be disabled at any time. > Note: The Shareable Links feature […]

Corporate Learning

Cultivating a Connected Workplace Learning Environment

Successful companies across all industries go to great lengths to build a culture of learning. When the culture of an organization is geared towards upskilling¹, they are able to perpetually add value and grow their market share. A company that is not busy growing is busy dying. When innovation moves at breakneck speed and the […]

Yellowdig Engage Product Update 5/11

Bug Fixes Added feature flag to disable confirmation message when weekly max is reached Pending board invitations now display without hovering Fixed group visibility regression Fixed bug blocking Community Health → By Student page Now forwarding redirect query params when encountering Not Logged In page Added internal API request retry policy to address some infrequent […]

Yellowdig Engage Product Update 5/5

Features Updated Members page with search options and pagination to support communities with large enrollments New page to manage multiple email addresses per account Grade sync LTI key/secret is now stored on each community, allowing grade sync to continue to work if community moves between networks Performance improvements Security enhancements Bug Fixes Fixed issue with […]

Start a real learning community with Yellowdig this Summer or Fall!

*Updated March 8, 2021. Due to an overwhelming amount of interest in light of COVID-19’s impact on the education ecosystem, Yellowdig is extending the availability of our limited time offer for free access. The deadline to express interest in this offer has been extended to June 30,2021. Click here to learn more* Are you feeling […]

Co-Curricular Uses

Driving Maximum Engagement for Virtual New Student Orientations

In case you missed it, the Department of Education (DOE) finally released the last set of regulations from its epic 2019 negotiated rule-making process on April 1st 2020. WCET has a comprehensive list of blogs with the latest updates from the DOE. This regulation, which has been a long time coming, is expected to have […]

How to Comply with DOE’s “Regular and Substantive Interaction” Clause

Co-Curricular Uses

Devouring Digital: The New Participation

Peek in on just about any university-level lecture and you’ll notice a student audience armed with a variety of technologies. Laptops. iPhones. Tablets. Probably even a few wearables. These are the tools that today’s (and most certainly tomorrow’s) students were born into. They shape their identity. They power productivity, social lives, problem solving (see: Siri, […]

Build Online Communities to Support Students Outside the “Zoom Room”

Dear Friends looking to set up an online classroom in the wake of the pandemic, I hope you are well. Our thoughts go out to those being affected by the spread of COVID-19, please see this announcement I made last month about Yellowdig’s response to the pandemic. Like many of you, we have spent the […]

Yellowdig Engage Product Update 3/31

Features: Completely re-designed point configuration interface New comparative analytics dashboard This feature is still in beta testing. We will notify Engage clients when it is enabled. Friendly error messages for request timeouts Improved not-logged-in page language Questions? Reach out to [email protected]. Brian Hurlow is the Director of Technology at Yellowdig.

Yellowdig Engage Product Update 3/20

Features: New display of pending invitations on Communities page Improved appearance of direct message creation dialogue and mobile styles. (Note: Direct messaging is in beta. Email us at [email protected] to request access.) Improved handling of unsupported video formats Permalinks for comments New time zones Network admins can prevent users from changing their primary email Security […]