A note from our Learning and Academic Support Manager:

Hello Instructors!

Yellowdig is a discussion platform that connects learners and empowers educators.  Our vision is to create learning communities where discussion and sharing foster the relationships, skills, and knowledge that allow people to thrive.

We have compiled a set of guidelines to help you achieve this vision.  The guidelines are based on extensive input and case studies from our hundreds of thousands of daily active users, my experiences as a college instructor, and Education and Psychology research.  Your use case may require different choices and that’s fine! However, these guidelines were developed from experiences at a variety of institutions and in various subject areas. We think these recommendations will ensure your learners get as much as possible from Yellowdig while also simplifying your life!

You can browse our best practices online through our Knowledge Base or download a pdf for printing or for sharing.   For your convenience, a "checklist" of these appear below.

If you have questions about how to use Yellowdig please reach out to the Yellowdig Client Success team (clientsuccess@yellowdig.com).  My team and I are also always looking to improve our instructor support, so if you have comments or suggestions, please share.

Good luck and let us know if we can be of help!

All the best,

Brian Verdine, Ph.D.

Best Practices Checklist

Do These

• Use the "Resources" drop-down and Help button, and point students to them
• Make it low stakes, but enable grade passback
• Set up points
• Use the weekly points maximum with a buffer
• Use the weekly participation notifications
• Require Topics for Pins and create them before the course starts
• Be the model for your learning community
• Introduce yourself
• Use “Pin to Top” on your pins
• Gamify your participation

Avoid Doing These

• Do NOT make weekly Yellowdig assignment links in your LMS
• Don’t make strict participation requirements
• Don’t delete Topics
• Don’t expect the negative
• Don’t worry

Save Yourself Time

• Encourage class-related questions
• Quickly give good feedback
• Again, don’t make strict participation requirements