Yellowdig Engage is the culmination of years of planning and development. We are proud of the fruits of our labor, and we encourage you to join us as we transition to a faster, more modern, and more accessible platform with many new and refined features. Below, we summarize some of our highest impact developments in the areas of architecture and data, interface and performance, and functionality.
Architecture and Data
Nomenclature changes
Name changes are being made throughout the platform to reflect the community-building focus of our mission and what we envision Yellowdig enabling for our users and partners. The experience we create is quite different from standard "discussion" boards, and we have repeatedly seen that participation and engagement with a community is far more important for student outcomes than focusing their attention on grading. A number of the other changes are to avoid potential conflicts with other naming conventions that are emerging in the field (e.g., such as "badge") or that have previously been confusing for users. Our updates are indicated below:
Pin → Post
Board → Community
Board Owner → Community Owner
Board Admin → Community Facilitator
Board Member → Community Member
Badge → Accolade
Upvote → Reaction
We believe the new nomenclature is more intuitive, less susceptible to confusion, and better reflective of our pedagogical values.
Networks and Subnetworks
Our reconceived Network system is one of the hallmarks of the Engage platform. Networks and Subnetworks facilitate safe and contained Community discovery, help administrators customize and monitor smaller entities in their organization, enable and circumscribe student-run Communities, and enhance organizations' data analysis capabilities. We strongly encourage all administrators (including department chairs) to read through the Networks and Subnetworks section of the Knowledge Base. Properly setting up your Networks will vastly improve your analytical capabilities and ensure that students' data is properly organized and protected.
Enhanced data analytics
When properly constructed, Networks and Subnetworks enable highly detailed department-level data analysis. Using our large suite of data analysis tools (currently in development), organizations will be able to visualize usage and performance patterns, compare department-level success metrics to organization- and Yellowdig-wide metrics, identify highly successful instructors and departments, and compare students' productivity in Communities with different settings. These advanced analytical tools will help instructors hone their Yellowdig pedagogies and help organizational administrators identify areas of excellence and improvement. (Note: All features discussed here are provisional, and some of these tools are premium features.)
Grade passback
To alleviate confusions from students and instructors, we have changed the way Yellowdig grades are calculated and passed back to LMS gradebooks. Formerly, grades were passed back as a proportion of a student's current point total over the 100% participation goal:
$$ \textbf{Yellowdig Classic grade} = \frac{\text{student's current point total}}{\text{100% participation goal}} $$
This calculation confused some users, since students who consistently reached the weekly max would have to wait until the end of the course to see a perfect score in their LMS gradebook column. Now, grades are passed back as a proportion of a student's current point total over the number of points they would need up to the current week of the course to be on pace to reach the 100% participation goal:
$$ \textbf{Yellowdig Engage grade} = \frac{\text{student's current point total}}{(\frac{\text{100% participation goal}}{\text{number of weeks in course}}) \times \text{number of weeks elapsed}} $$
While the calculation is itself more complex, the result of the calculation should be more intuitive to students. On this calculation, students who always reach the weekly max will always have a perfect score in their LMS grade column for Yellowdig at the end of each week. This should ameliorate students' concerns about "not receiving the right grade" for their work. Additionally, because we display the grade as a proportion, there will no longer be seeming discrepancies between Yellowdig grades and LMS grades. For a brief primer on the new passback system, see this article. For an in-depth look at the new grading formula, along with the rationale behind it, see this article.
Interface and Performance
Accessibility
Accessibility is another hallmark of the new platform. Yellowdig Engage dramatically improves upon its predecessor in this regard. Highlights include:
- Keyboard accessibility. Most web elements in Yellowdig Engage (including multimedia elements) are navigable by keyboard alone, and "tabbed" elements are highlighted clearly throughout. Those with motor disabilities can navigate Yellowdig Engage with far greater ease than was possible in Yellowdig Classic. As development progresses, we will continue to aim for 100% keyboard accessibility.
- Vision accessibility. Yellowdig Engage offers far greater support for the visually impaired. In particular, distinguishability has been greatly improved. And, as always, we do not rely on color to convey essential information.
- Hearing accessibility. Screen reading is now supported in Yellowdig Engage. We have tested Yellowdig with VoiceOver and can confirm compatibility. Upon request, we can test out other applications in use at your institution.
Conformance to WCAG 2.1 standards remains a priority for the Engage platform. As we are actively developing and refining platform features, we cannot guarantee maximum accessibility at all times, though WCAG compliance remains our goal. Even features oriented toward accessibility can sometimes introduce other temporary accessibility issues. Regardless of these sometimes unexpected concerns, Yellowdig Engage remains a massive step up for accessibility, and Yellowdig Classic clients with accessibility concerns are strongly encouraged to switch to Engage. If you are experiencing any accessibility problems in Yellowdig Engage, please let us know about the problem by contacting support@yellowdig.com and we will see what we can do to resolve it.
Responsive design
Yellowdig Engage is significantly more responsive than the old platform. Yellowdig.app is responsive on tablet and mobile, and users can fully access Yellowdig on their mobile browsers without having to download a dedicated mobile application.
Quicker load times
Page loads in Yellowdig Engage are significantly faster than in Yellowdig Classic, with far fewer external requests per page load. While official benchmarks are forthcoming, Engage is roughly two times faster (on a very conservative estimate) than Classic. With new updates, expect Engage to get even faster. We have our eyes on 4X to 6X speed increases on page loads. Stay tuned!
Modern-looking interface
In addition to being more accessible, our new interface is sleeker, less cluttered, more intuitive, and better suited for LMS shells. The Engage interface also has easier to access and "sticky" button elements, allowing users to more easily create and sort Posts on the fly as they scroll through their Feeds. Finally, the new interface has a color scheme that is, shall we say, easier on the eyes.
Functionality
Record Video (beta)
In Yellowdig Classic, users could attach videos to a post, but they could not record videos within the platform itself. In Engage, users can record videos and attach them to Posts without ever leaving the platform. This feature is particularly handy for video self-introductions and recorded presentations.
Note: this feature is in active development, and it is not yet accessible to the hearing impaired. As we continue to work on auto-captioning, organizations may request to disable this feature.
Draw (beta)
Within the platform, users can now draw diagrams and annotate on top of uploaded photos and diagrams.
New Accolade system (formerly Badges)
In the old platform, instructors could award only one type of Accolade (i.e., Badge). In Engage, instructors can create and award multiple types of Accolades with custom titles, icons, and point values. In keeping with our best practices, we encourage instructors to create multiple Accolades with clear and distinct awarding criteria.
Enhanced Reactions (formerly Upvotes)
Previously, users could react to a Post or Comment only by "liking" or "loving". Now, users can react to Posts and Comments in 1500+ ways, depending on organizational and instructor settings. Instructors can also assign different point values to different Reactions, which gives some greater flexibility in thinking of inventive ways to use those reactions.
Groups
Community Owners can now sort Community Members into groups. The groups can know about and see posts by other groups, with filtering capabilities, or the groups can be hidden from students so that they won't necessarily know they are being grouped. Though more content to read is typically a good thing for engagement, this latter grouping type is useful for MOOCs or classes with very large enrollments where a highly active feed might give the sense of having an overwhelming amount of content. Both modes have the advantage of grouping students but allowing community facilitators to post content once for all of the groups to see.
Discover
Community Owners can now choose to make their Communities discoverable by members of their institutional Network. Users can explore and/or request to join discoverable Communities within their Networks, depending on Community settings. Enabling Discoverability is a great way to encourage organization-level exploration and enhance learner engagement. Student-run Communities, Communities for clubs and interest groups, and Communities advertising student events are good candidates for discoverability. See this guide for more information.
Language Support
The Engage platform supports Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and many other languages. We do not guarantee support for all world languages, and non-Romance languages may be slightly more "finicky" than Romance languages. If you're interested in using Yellowdig for a language that isn't listed here, let us know!