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 institutional or departmental Network.
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. If you have a sidebar link to Yellowdig, that link will not establish grade passback. Be sure to communicate this to your students directly and/or direct them to this help article.
How to turn your Yellowdig sidebar link into a graded assignment link
In Canvas, the default sidebar link to Yellowdig is an external tool link, not a graded assignment link. Because of this, students who launch into Yellowdig only through the default sidebar link will not receive a grade for Yellowdig in their gradebook. It is possible, however, to create a sidebar link that redirects users to the graded assignment link, thereby indirectly forging a grade passback connection. (We are indebted to Lisa Gordis of Barnard College for discovering this trick.)
1. Hide the original sidebar link by going to Settings → Navigation. Then, click the vertical ellipsis icon next to Yellowdig. (Your menu item might have a slightly different name.). Then, click Disable.
2. Go to the Assignments page. Right-click your Yellowdig assignment and select "Copy Link Address" (or the equivalent command in Windows/Linux).
3. Install the Redirect Tool, an external app developed by Canvas. To do this, go to the Apps tab of the Settings page and search "redirect tool". Click on the box with the arrow icon, and then click +Add App.
4. A modal window should now appear. Under Name, insert "Yellowdig". Under URL Redirect, paste the URL that you copied during Step 2. Finally, put a checkmark next to "Show in Course Navigation".
5. Click on any link on the left-hand menu. An option for Yellowdig option should now appear in the left-hand menu. Click on Yellowdig. If you originally set your assignment to load in a new tab, you will see a button that reads "Load Yellowdig in a new window", which you must click to access your Community. Otherwise, your Community will automatically render as an iFrame inside your Canvas course. Either way, students who click this link will successfully activate grade passback for themselves.