What is Yellowdig?
Yellowdig is the discussion platform we'll be using this semester. Traditional discussion forums often rely on specific prompts or questions posed by the instructor, limiting the variety of responses you can provide. Yellowdig offers a dynamic experience that relies on elements from social media, gamification, tagging, and more to allow you to have meaningful, organic, and authentic conversations with your peers.
How does it work?
Your instructor will set a series of earning periods, typically aligning with instructional weeks during the semester. Each earning period, you will have an opportunity to acquire a specified number of points. At the beginning of the week, you start with zero, but as you engage with your peers you can earn points (check your points status in the Yellowdig community, not the Canvas gradebook). The more you post, the more points you will earn. In addition, each time someone replies to one of your posts, you get points, too. If you create a thoughtful and insightful post that can foster a lot of engagement, your peers will respond, and you’ll be earning points in no time. If you contribute a post that simply meets the requirements, you’ll have to do more work to engage with your peers and earn the required points for that earning period.
Each earning period has a set number of points for you to acquire – typically around 1000 points (but this can vary from course to course). If you only earn 800 points in one earning period, that is your score for that week. You cannot acquire points for earning periods that have ended.
How do I stay on track with this activity?
Yellowdig has a section titled “Points earned” on the right-side navigation bar. This allows you to quickly see your grade. For a more detailed view of the earning periods and your accrued points, click on the blue link at the bottom of the “Points earned” section: "Show Details."
The "Show details" link will lead you to a screen overlay where you will see four important sections: Participation Log, Earning Points, My Participation, and Point Earning Periods. Clicking on the section titles expands them to display more detailed information. You'll want to pay careful attention to the Earning Points section and the Point Earning Periods. The Earning Points section outlines exactly how your posts will be graded by Yellowdig. The Points Earning Periods display the start and end dates of each earning period. Review this carefully at the start of the semester to make sure you don't lose valuable opportunities to miss out on earning points.
Note:
Yellowdig is course course-related activity that is tied to your final grade in the course. Therefore, it is not acceptable to use AI-generated responses for this activity. To do so is a violation of Academic Integrity and could result in your failure of the course.
Click on the Yellowdig Conversations page in your Canvas course, where you can follow the directions to create an account and pay the fee for the semester.
Once you receive access to the system, you can review the Getting Started messages and tutorials.
Visit the Yellowdig Orientation Guide for Students, and if you have trouble setting up Yellowdig or gaining access to the system, contact the Yellowdig helpdesk at this link.