How to integrate Yellowdig with your Canvas course
1. Request your LMS Key and Secret from a Network Administrator who belongs to your Network. If you do not know who to contact, please reach out to support@yellowdig.com. Do not accept Keys and Secrets from Administrators who do not belong to your Network, and make sure that the Key and Secret you received belongs to the Network in which you want to create your Community. If you use a Key and Secret from a different Network—even if it's a parent Network—your Community will appear in the wrong Network, and your students may have trouble accessing your Community. In addition, your institutional and departmental usage data will be less accurate.
2. In your Course page, navigate to Settings → Apps. Then click on the View App Configurations button, followed by the +App button. Do not select the Yellowdig app from the Canvas App Center.
3. In the Add App pop-up window, choose "By URL" as your configuration type, and copy-paste one of the following URLs into the "Config URL" field:
- https://yellowdig-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/yd-canvas-engage.xml
- https://yellowdig-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/yd-canvas-engage-hidden-sidebar.xml
The first URL automatically adds a "Yellowdig Engage" link to your Canvas sidebar. If you choose this option, and if you're using Yellowdig to pass back a grade, make sure that your students enter your Yellowdig Community through the Assignments link at least once during the life of your Community in order to establish grade passback.
The second URL hides the "Yellowdig Engage" sidebar link by default. This forces your students to navigate to Yellowdig through the Assignments link for as long as the sidebar link is hidden. This is a good option if you don't want to rely on your students to follow the above instructions. If, at a later date, you wish to enable the sidebar link, simply navigate to Settings → Navigation, enable the "Yellowdig Engage" item, and click the Save button:
4. Fill in the rest of the fields as follows using your Config URL of choice:
5. Finally, click the Submit button.
How to link Yellowdig to your Canvas gradebook
1. Navigate to Assignments and click the +Assignment button. Create only one Assignment for Yellowdig.
2. Give it a Name (e.g., "Yellowdig Conversations"). This will appear as a column name in your Canvas gradebook.
3. Set the Points for Yellowdig in line with your grade breakdown. For example, if Yellowdig is worth 10% of your final course grade, and there are 1000 possible points for the course, allocate 100 points to Yellowdig. If Yellowdig is an ungraded element of your course, allocate 0 points to Yellowdig or select "Do not count this assignment toward the final grade". For more on how grade passback works, see the Knowledge Base article.
4. Select "External Tool" from the Submission Type drop down menu; enter https://api.yellowdig.app/launch as the External Tool URL; and select "Load This Tool In A New Tab" option (recommended). These steps are summarized below:
5. Click the Save and Publish button.
How to LTI-create your Yellowdig Community
1. Click the Assignment link that you've just created, which will launch Yellowdig and prompt you to create your Community for the class. Since the first user to click the link is automatically made the Community Owner, it is important that you click the Assignment link and set up your Community before your students can access it.
2. To establish grade passback, you and each of your students must launch into Yellowdig through the one graded Assignment link that you created. Be sure to communicate this to your students directly and/or direct them to this help article.