Blog

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 […]

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 […]

How to Reduce Professor Burnout with Modern Student Engagement

Our teachers are the backbone of society. Teaching, planning, and making an impact on students are no small feats. However, at times, we take for granted the hard work, time, and energy put in to keep academia going. One large issue hitting professors like never before is faculty burnout.But don’t fret too much– we have […]

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 […]

Student Success

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 […]

Student Success

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 […]

Latest at Yellowdig

Corporate Learning, Instructor Stories

Using Discussion Boards to Increase Student and Class Engagement: Effective? Clichéd? Let’s discuss.

We’ve all heard of discussion boards at this point. It has long been introduced to universities and various K-12 schools for students to access course material, complete assignments, and look at grades. What is a discussion board? It is an online “bulletin board” where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. People […]

How The University of Delaware Boosted Its Online MBA Ranking by Targeting Student Engagement

We had the pleasure of sitting down (virtually) with Jack Baroudi, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Programs for the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics. In our conversation he shared the secrets behind the University of Delaware’s 15 spot jump up to 32nd in the US News & World Report Best Online […]

Product Updates, Yellowdig

New Update: Reminders and Notifications!

We have some amazing updates coming up this Summer! Changes to Yellowdig’s reminders and notifications can be configurable within your Yellowdig Community and will be released on June 28th. At Yellowdig, we value the feedback from our unique instructor and faculty experiences, these updates are coming directly from your feedback, thank you! We’re hoping you […]

The Evolution of Gameful Learning with Yellowdig’s Shaunak Roy and Brian Hurlow

The world of education has come a long way with new methods of teaching and learning arising as years progress. In particular, the increase in different education technologies has had a significant impact in how content is delivered in the classroom. Shaunak Roy, CEO of Yellowdig, and Brian Hurlow, Director of Technology, sat down to […]

Roles of Hybrid Learning and Blended Learning — What Will and Will Not Work Post-Pandemic

What is Hybrid Learning? Hybrid learning is a unique combination of in-person and online instruction, mixing traditional styles of teaching and learning with online teaching practices. The goal of this type of learning is to provide different techniques of learning to effectively deliver course content and material. Students enrolled in hybrid classes that meet three […]

A Student Perspective, Yellowdig

Teaching a Women’s History Course — Thoughts about Yellowdig From a Professor on the Deaf Spectrum

Speakers: Gayle Fischer and Bob Ertischek Building a community for students to learn and listen to each other is an effective approach to teaching. Gayle Fischer, history professor at Salem State University, sat down with Yellowdig in April 2021 to talk about how she uses our virtual classroom platform for her Women’s History Class. Prior […]

In-Person vs. Online Learning — Can They Compare?

Online vs. In-Person Class for Learning — What is Best? Many may believe with the changes in the way students are being taught that there is one medium of teaching that is better than the other. As technology has developed, we’ve been able to connect with people all over the world through apps like WhatsApp, […]

Co-Curricular Uses, Instructor Stories, Student Success

New Update: Anonymous Posting, Feed Redesign, Search Improvements, and More!

For those who couldn’t find a way to get the summer off to spend more time cooling off in a pool, we’re hoping this makes your summer in the classroom feel a bit cooler! We plan to start releasing this set of changes on May 3rd, after which you will start noticing the changes in […]

Driving Virtual Participation in a Career Exploration Program

Yellowdig had the honor of hosting a guest webinar with DePaul University, a school that has been integrating Yellowdig’s services for “Future Forward” program. We had notable key speakers from our team and DePaul’s team to talk about the ways Yellowdig is used. What is the Future Forward Career Education Program? It is a co-curricular […]

Guest Feature

5 Questions for MIT's Vice President for Open Learning, Sanjay Sarma

Sanjay Sarma is the Vice President for Open Learning at MIT, and the co-author of Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn. Along with Luke Yoquinto. Their book is a fantastic resource for teachers, professors looking for cutting-edge learning research, and parents evaluating educational opportunities. “Grasp takes readers across multiple frontiers, from fundamental neuroscience to […]

Spring Clean Your Classroom: Clear Out These 8 Myths About Online Communities

Talking to instructors who are new to Yellowdig, we often find there are a number of misconceptions around student participation and the role of the instructor. We have compiled a list of 8 myths and debunked them with the reality we have seen across our company partners below! Myth #1 – Students need prompts to […]