At the Center for Distributed Learning, one of our goals is to investigate avenues that create more effective online teaching and learning environments at UCF. To that end, the Pegasus Innovation Lab (iLab) is assisting faculty and staff in exploring the online discussion tool, Yellowdig, through a summer and fall pilot.
Yellowdig is built on pedagogical principles, offering an innovative way for students and faculty to interact and discuss course topics. Using a modern social media interface, students and instructors can take advantage of filters, hashtags, and reactions to enhance discussion. Yellowdig also provides helpful analytics to better understand community interaction and engagement. View a Yellowdig online interactive demo below.
Recordings
The iLab hosted two live sessions with the Yellowdig facilitators – one in April 2022 and one in August 2022 – to help demonstrate this tool as well as raise interest in potential pilot participants to use Yellowdig in their courses. If you were not able to attend one of these sessions, you can view a recording of the sessions here: Thursday, April 7th Session Recording and Monday, August 15th Session Recording (passcode LY0X$b.6).
Resources
For those participating in the summer and/or fall pilots, the following resources may be beneficial as you get started. Tip: Yellowdig provides a set of basic settings when setting up the tool in your course, which they recommend using the first time you teach with Yellowdig but you are welcome to adjust and customize as needed.
Certification Modules
- Instructor Certification Course: These are free asynchronous modules that walk you through all of Yellowdig’s best practices, explain how to get started, and leave you with a plethora of follow up resources. The typical amount of time needed to complete the course is an hour.
- Facilitator & TA Certification Course: These are free asynchronous modules that serve as a concise guide to facilitating and managing ongoing Yellowdig Communities as an Instructor, Teaching Assistant, or member of an instructional team.
- Yellowdig Training Modules: These are all of the modules that are currently available including STEM, Data Analysis & Efficacy, Co-curricular Community Building, Corporate Community-Building, and Organization Administration.
Pedagogy – Using Yellowdig
- Yellowdig Resources: This link provides additional resources such as events, case studies, newsletters, and blogs.
- Video Script for Instructors: Curious what to say during your instructor introduction? Check out this script!
- Creating/Copying a Yellowdig Community: This guide will help if you’d like to learn more about creating a Yellowdig community or copying your community from one course to another.
- Yellowdig & the Gradebook: This guide helps clarify how the points work between Yellowdig and being passed back to the Canvas gradebook.
- Community Interaction Strategies
- Student Resources:
- Telling Your Students About Yellowdig: If you’re not sure how to tell your students about Yellowdig, this may be a helpful resource to get started.
- Yellowdig Orientation Guide for Students: A few short videos (10 minutes total) that will help provide an overview about Yellowdig for students.
- FAQ for learners/students
- Student Orientation Videos
Technical Resources & Support
- Adding Yellowdig to Your Course: Yellowdig will be integrated directly into Webcourses. You can add Yellowdig as an assignment in your course for students to easily access. You can use either of the guides below for assistance. Note: students will need to click on Yellowdig from the assignment at least once in order for the grades to passback from Yellowdig into the Webcourses gradebook.
- How to Add an Assignment Using an External Tool (Yellowdig Guide)
- How to Add an Assignment Using an External Tool (Canvas Guide)
- Adding Yellowdig to the Course Navigation (Optional): If you would also like to add Yellowdig to your course’s navigation menu on the left hand side, you can do so using this guide.
- Semester Start Checklist: Once Yellowdig has been added to your course in Webcourses, this checklist may be helpful in getting you prepared for using Yellowdig in your course.
- Search, Filter, and Sort: Having trouble keeping up with posts and comments, or wanting to find a post quickly? This guide provides some quick tipcs on how to easily navigate through the Yellowdig feed.
- Help and Support: Have a question or running into technical issues? This link provides technical guides as well as a link to Yellowdig’s support team. Their team will be able to handle any technical issues you or your students may encounter.
- Commitment to Accessibility: In case you have any accessibility concerns, Yellowdig is AA compliant and provides a list of their commitment to accessibility.