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Fresh perspectives, proven strategies, and stories from real Yellowdig classrooms.
Featured
If Students Have Something to Say, Let Them Talk : A Yellowdig Story

Dr. Scott StandiferrSouthern 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 […]
Announcing Yellowdig's Guaranteed Retention Outcome

Higher education is facing a structural challenge.   Enrollment pressure is real.   Student acquisition costs are rising.   And too many capable students quietly disengage before we see it coming.   The data is clear: academic performance alone does not predict persistence. Connection does.   Belonging is no longer a “student life” concept. It […]
Latest at Yellowdig
Product Updates
The New Horizon of Opportunity with Yellowdig’s Group Update

Before: When groups were enabled, you could only work in groups. When they were public, students in other groups could interact with your posts, but all original posts had to go to a group. Now: So many more options to configure your Community! In addition to the system being configurable as it always has been, […]
Co-Curricular Uses, Product Updates
Yellowdig's Freeform Points: Breaking Free to Enable Co-Curricular Activities

Although Yellowdig is mostly used to build community and engagement in the classroom setting, we have seen a number of uses that were fantastic outside of the classroom. Student clubs, alumni groups, courses with rolling enrollment, and special events are just as critical to the complete student experience as typical courses. This is why we […]
Product Updates, Yellowdig
Yellowdig's New and Improved Instructor Certification Course

At Yellowdig, we don’t claim for our technology to be magic. The real magic happens when you combine our technology with our data-backed pedagogical approach. We are an education company first, and we believe in the power of humans to power learning, with the enablement of thoughtfully designed technology. Our Instructor Certification Course is designed […]
Yellowdig
The Topic is Topics

In my face-to-face classes, I’d look around the classroom and try to intuit whether or not my students “got” what I was talking about by asking pointed questions, listening to the responses of the one or two students I had time to call on, and then looking for glimmers of recognition in the eyes of […]
A Student Perspective, Student Success, Yellowdig
Yellowdig Student and Instructor Fall 2020 Survey Results

At the end of the Fall 2020 semester we asked Yellowdig instructors to share a survey with their students, as well as fill one out for themselves. These analyses are based on over 200 student responses and 30 instructor responses. 88.9% of students were completely remote, 10.5% were hybrid, and less than 1% were in-person. […]
A Student Perspective, STEM
A Student Perspective of Yellowdig

At the center of Yellowdig is community and at the center of community are the learners. We value the experience and insights from students very highly, which is why we have put a lot of effort into making sure their voices are heard. Recently in our student panel webinar, we had the opportunity to hear […]
Product Updates
Yellowdig Product Update: LaTeX Editor

Yellowdig has always been focused on creating the best environment for any academic use case, from English to Biology. With this goal in mind, we have recently improved the LaTeX editor. Why is the updated LaTeX Editor important? It allows students to format equations correctly and more simply. It helps students work together to solve […]
Instructor Stories
A Look into Gameful Learning with an Online Learning Platform

Dr. Ben Plummer got his PhD at the University of Michigan focusing on motivation and gameful learning. Now he works as a learning experience designer for the Ross School of Business, designing courses for their online MBA program. Dr. Mika LaVaque-Manty is the director of the Honors Program in the College of LSA at the […]
Corporate Learning
Reducing Stress in 2021: 10 Tips for Instructors

We are extremely grateful for all of the teachers who are on the front lines risking their own health to educate our youth. We admire your strength and adaptability that has been evident over the past year. In an effort to help you, we have put together some tips and resources specifically for those dealing […]
STEM
Guide to Using Yellowdig for STEM Classes

Yellowdig is a very effective tool for STEM classes. With the right ~simple~ setup, you can motivate students to participate and engage with each other throughout the whole semester. If you would like to learn more about why Yellowdig works for science, technology, engineering, and math classes, check out our conversations and research with STEM […]
Student Success
8 Tips for High-Quality, Open Conversations

There are two types of reactions instructors have when they switch over to Yellowdig. They either are so excited to not have the responsibility of orchestrating the conversation and letting it happen naturally or they are afraid to break the structure they are used to in standard “discussion boards” and continue to post prompts for […]
Yellowdig
10 things to know about Yellowdig from 2020

Yellowdig is an Education Technology Company Driving Change in Virtual Classrooms This year has been a whirlwind for the entire world, and the education industry has had its own unique challenges. Here at Yellowdig, that was no exception. Although this year had it’s clear challenges for everyone, including the EdTech space, our team was able […]
Latest at Yellowdig
Student Success
How to Comply with DOE’s “Regular and Substantive Interaction” Clause

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 […]
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, […]
Student Success
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 […]
Product Updates
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 clientsuccess@yellowdig.com. Brian Hurlow is the Director of Technology at Yellowdig.
Product Updates
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 clientsuccess@yellowdig.com 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 […]
Student Success
How to Build an Online Community that Rocks!

The Basics of Creating Community in a Virtual Cassroom: There are many free and paid technology options for starting an online community. While choosing software, it is important to consider: 1) ease of use rather than just a feature checklist, 2) access to data, and 3) compliance with the regulations and standards of your industry.  We […]
Yellowdig
Maintaining Learning Communities Amid Coronavirus Concerns

Yellowdig helps connect students, teachers and administrators so that learning can happen anytime and from anywhere. Our #1 goal has always been to make sure every online student has the network needed to excel in their program and graduate. We purposefully built our platform to support fully asynchronous learning. We are making Yellowdig Engage available […]
Product Updates
Yellowdig Engage Product Update 3/4

Features: Posts can now be copied via permalink Discoverable boards are now searchable Not authorized page appears when an issue is preventing users from accessing part of the platform Performance Improvements: Scalability improvements in notification pipeline for large enrollment communities Improved page load performance Upgraded software versions Bug Fixes: Fixed performance issues on /user/notifications page […]
Student Success
The Textbook’s Crumbling Monopoly

But that is no longer the case today. The textbook’s monopoly on knowledge is crumbling (if it hasn’t already). Scan any university campus or peek in on any dorm room and you will see fewer books. Why? Well aside from the astronomically inflated cost of textbooks at campus bookstores, the model in which students acquire […]
Product Updates
Yellowdig Engage Product Update 2/19

Features: Password complexity checking. This strengthens the security of users’ accounts. Post reply-to threading UI. This distinguishes replies to comments from replies to posts, making it easier to read and track long conversations. Avatar hover card. This allows users to follow and directly message each other by hovering over their picture in the feed. Interactive […]
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 […]

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