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

April Product Update

Coming Soon to Yellowdig’s Engage Platform You suggested, and we listened! Our Dev team has been working hard to update the Yellowdig Engage platform with great new features to improve the platform for instructors and learners alike. A new and improved post editor experience is coming soon that will allow you to do more when […]

Feeling Stuck? Here are the Top 5 Ways to Accelerate Course Completion Rates

When designing courses, it is hard not to think about course completion rates. For some time now, course completion rates have been staggeringly low, especially in online courses. Notoriously, Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, stand at a 5%-15% rate of completion. BUT, don’t let that number discourage you, because we have 5 tips on […]

Webinar

Resiliency in Academia: Lessons Learned from COVID-19

With such decreased physical distance between learner and faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic, the typical world of academia was flipped upside-down. Without choice, faculty had to adjust to their new concerns within their profession while balancing the heavy toll of what is COVID-19. This is no small feat. But in this time, faculty rose to […]

STEM

Online Learning vs. Traditional Learning: Is Online College Cheaper

Making the decision to enroll at a university can be a daunting task because of the financial burden that higher education places on its students. Students are expected to take out large loans to finance their education right out of high school because a traditional college education costs more than most Americans can afford. In […]

How Virtual Learning Make Education More Flexible For Students

Because of COVID-19, some areas of life have seen innovation in order to keep people safe. Services like grocery delivery, contactless payment, and online teleconferencing applications aren’t new, but they have been massively improved upon in recent years due to the pandemic. In the same vein, online learning has exploded in the higher education scene […]

January Product Update

Catch the latest in Yellowdig’s Engage platform We’ve had a slew of updates to our Engage platform this past month, and we want to share what they are and why they were implemented. Every update is live in the platform, so go check them out! Points Communication Improvements Bookmarked Conversations Student Onboarding Flow Topics Without […]

How Virtual Classrooms Make Education More Accessible

Accessibility has always been an important topic in education because educators want to ensure that everyone—regardless of age, disability, or lifestyle—can have access to a quality education. With the rise of virtual classes, a fully online education is more accessible than ever by allowing students to learn anywhere synchronously or asynchronously. In this blog, let’s […]

Yellowdig 2021 Year in Review

Yellowdig is committed in its mission of providing a student-driven social learning platform to support classrooms in any modality, and we made a lot of progress in that mission this year—amid a worldwide pandemic. 2021 has been anything but predictable, and the world of higher education and EdTech is no exception. With universities across the […]

Yellowdig + Canvas LTI 1.3

We’re proud to share that our team is staying ahead of the curve by currently supporting the latest 1.3 integrations in Canvas (Launches + Assignment and Grade Services). We understand that many schools and organizations won’t decide to transition to 1.3 for some time, and so Yellowdig will continue to fully support the LTI 1.1 […]

How a Student Benefited from Yellowdig during COVID-19

In the wake of COVID-19, higher education must look to the future and ensure that students are receiving a college education that reflects their needs—especially in online learning environments where students often cite a lack of interaction with their peers. A Student’s Perspective Difficulties during the pandemic Christina Falletta, a sophomore elementary education major at […]

How to Increase Student Engagement in Blended Learning Environments

Learning to engage students in the classroom is a crucial teaching strategy because student engagement is a prerequisite for learning and a strong predictor of student success. It allows your students to thrive in the class because they are actively participating which leads to higher mastery of the course material. In 2021 and beyond, teachers […]