Yellowdig

What is Yellowdig? 

Yellowdig is a platform that UCF has licensed which is designed to promote a meaningful student-driven online community. Points are earned by engaging in different actions (e.g., posting, receiving a reply) and these actions can vary from earning period to earning period. Scoring is automatic and syncs with the Webcourses Gradebook. The instructor creates the high-level topics and models productive behavior but are not expected to read every post or reply. Analytics aid an instructor to identify students at risk.

Video Watch the video below for a brief overview of how to use Yellowdig.

Which courses are eligible?

At the moment, distance learning-fee funded courses are eligible (W, RS, V) to use it at no cost to students. Beginning in summer 2024, M and P courses will be able to use it but students would have to purchase it (currently $12.95 per person per course).

Yellowdig may be a good fit for you and your students if:

  • You want students to engage in discussions but do not want to create distinct prompts for every week
  • You have a large class and cannot manually grade every discussion post
  • You are comfortable with students generating their own discussions (note that the instructor creates the topics that the students choose from)
  • You do not feel the need to look at every single post
  • You are comfortable being an active contributor in the discussion community
  • You are comfortable with social media features and navigation
  • You are comfortable with having one column in your gradebook which will fluctuate throughout the semester

What do students like about it?

  • “More genuine interaction and conversation.”
  • “Emoticons, tagging, seeing points right away.”
  • “Actually getting to express my thoughts and ask questions without having to worry about citations and word counts.”
  • “Yellowdig promoted interaction with my classmates that was more authentic than traditional discussion boards.”
  • “It pushed me to think more about the course and connect it.”

What do teachers like about it?

  • “The way it centers student-to-student conversation and interaction.”
  • “Students developed a much stronger network and the connections between the instructor and the students were overall better as well.”
  • “I like how the students’ posts allowed me to get a better sense of what they were taking away from the course material, since they were creating their own posts around things they learned instead of responding to my prompts.”
  • “The format was a nice change for my students. I like the accolades and emojis - and they seemed to like it, which is key.”

Resources

Visit the Yellowdig page on the CDL site for more info.