Yellowdig is an online discussion tool that uses the layout and conventions of a social media platform to encourage community-building within a course.
Unlike a conventional discussion board, Yellowdig fosters student engagement by gamifying class interactions. Students earn points for creating discussion posts, but they are also awarded points when they receive comments and reactions from their classmates and instructors. Grading in Yellowdig is automatic, meaning that faculty can spend less time scoring posts and more time facilitating meaningful discussions with their students.
Yellowdig will be integrated with your Blackboard course, so students will not need to create a separate username and password for the system. As soon as students click the Yellowdig link from inside your Blackboard course, they can join the discussion.
Are you interested in trying Yellowdig in one of your courses? The first step is to reach out to LeBow InTech at lebowintech@drexel.edu. We will set up an onboarding call with you and assist with adding a Yellowdig link to your course.
Once LeBow InTech has confirmed that the link has been added, you can follow the steps below to set up your Yellowdig community.
Step-by-Step
- From your Blackboard course, navigate to the Yellowdig Discussions content area, then select Yellowdig.
- If it is your first time accessing Yellowdig, change the default username to your Drexel username (abc123)
- Change your default email address from
first.middle.last@drexel.eduto yourabc123@drexel.eduemail address. You will receive an email from Yellowdig requesting that you confirm your new email address. Complete the confirmation process outlined in that email after you finish setting up your Yellowdig community. - Click Submit to proceed
- From the New Community page, scroll down to Community Organization then select LeBow College of Business if you are teaching at LeBow
- Leave the defaults for Community Title and Community Permission Level as-is, then click Submit
- You will be taken to your Yellowdig community’s homepage, where a Getting Started wizard will guide you through the following prompts:
- Set Start & End Dates: This setting will indicate when your class discussion should begin and end for the term. Most instructors will set the start-date to the Monday of Week 1 and the end-date to the Monday of Finals Week. Click Continue when finished.
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Edit Topics: Using your syllabus as a guide, create new topics in Yellowdig based on the key concepts you will be covering in each week of class.
- Enter a topic into the “Add a new topic” field, then click Submit to add it to the list of available topics. New topics will appear at the bottom of the list by default but can be reordered by dragging and dropping to the desired part of the topics list.
- We recommend keeping the Topics are required setting as-is. Requiring topics helps ensure that students’ conversations remain relevant to the course.
- Click Continue when all topics settings have been finalized. If you need to make any changes to your topics list, you will be able to return to this page at any point in the term.
- Design & Manage for Success: The instructor-facing videos included in this section outline recommended practices for community set-up and management. Click Continue to proceed.
- Communicate your expectations: Watch the embedded, student-facing video, and review the resources provided by Yellowdig. Click Done to exit the wizard.
- Once you have finished the steps above, you will return to your Yellowdig community feed. If you would like to access the Getting Started wizard in the future, select Getting Started from the left-hand navigation bar in your Yellowdig community. You can access additional options for making changes to your community in the Settings section of the left-hand navigation bar.
All new communities are set to use LeBow’s recommended point system by default. If you would like to review or modify these point values, please see our Setting Up Points in Yellowdig article for more information. We strongly encourage faculty to discuss any potential changes with our team before implementing them.
Please contact the Instructional Technology department at 215-895-2314 or lebowintech@drexel.edu for further assistance.