“Discussion Bored to Discussion More” Part 1: How to create community discussions using Yellowdig

When I work with faculty that teach immersion (students in the classroom) many of them are worried that if they teach online or hybrid they will lose what they feel is the cornerstone of the classroom experience: collaborative discussion. And it’s true, for many years we’ve been constrained by a model created in old-style internet forums using threads and responses. At first, they were exciting (maybe), but for many of us they’ve grown stale and the conversations contrived….or non-existent. But we shouldn’t abandon hope that online asynchronous discussion is possible and important. If anything, the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Discord have shown us that not only are many of our students capable of meaningful asynchronous interaction, but a large part of their social existence depends on it. So why don’t we have meaningful conversations in our own asynchronous classroom discussions? Why do students “go behind our backs” to create a Discord? (Will they please let us in?!) I would argue that perhaps we aren’t setting the stage for discussions about our course topics in the right way, and we too, can adapt to the times and trust our students to adapt with us.

In our last blog, Creating Peer-to-Peer Interaction in Online Courses, Instructional Designer Christy Jersin Woods, recommended moving away from our tried and true model of a discussion prompt with one response and two replies to peers. She recommended tools like Yellowdig and Slack for organic collaboration, but what do these software do? And how can you effectively launch them in your course?

In this article, we will break down how Yellowdig works and some ideas for getting started.

Yellowdig Engage!

Yellowdig is a community discussion page embedded in Canvas that operates best around open conversation. Think of it as your new classroom social media outlet. Students get points for original posts, comments, and liking or endorsing other students' posts with emoji. All of the things that help students earn points are customizable, but Yellowdig works best if you let it do what it does instead of trying to convert it back into the way Canvas or other LMS Discussion threads work.

Fueling Conversation

Instead of providing a weekly prompt to your students where you ask a specific question and get a very specific answer (and the last person to post has no idea what to say because it’s already been said), Yellowdig encourages instructors to think about using themes in their course. So what’s the difference between a prompt and a theme?

A prompt might look something like this:

Describe the impact of the scientific method in laboratories designing vaccines.

But if we use Yellowdig’s handy guide or even their interactive theme tool, we can convert this prompt into a more open-ended theme.

We’ve covered so many aspects of the scientific methods in this unit. While you are able to contribute interesting questions, articles, and resources within Yellowdig this week, if you need help getting started you could consider any of the following questions:

• How do scientists use the scientific method to inform decision-making?
• What types of decisions do you see scientists helping policymakers make today?
• Beyond the scientific method, what types of information contribute to how scientific conclusions are received by the scientific community or the general public? 

You may find yourself asking, “But won't students post irrelevant stuff or spam the system to get their weekly points if I don’t tell them what to post?” Yellowdig’s data says otherwise. The gamification aspect of Yellowdig by awarding points for liking, hashtagging, emoji, and replying to peers’ posts helps motivate more quality engagement. According to Yellowdig, “Points and grades motivate specific patterns of engagement. By rewarding activity that fosters useful conversations, the points drive students to behave in ways that create dynamic, interesting, and engaging communities. (Yellowdig Knowledge Base)”

Additionally, instructors can use topics to help students see how themes connect across the entire course curriculum. Instead of “Week 1” think instead “science in the news”, “ethics”, or “unanswered questions”. Yellowdig notes, “Yellowdig should not only be used for discussing problem sets. Great value can be derived when students share and discuss real-world connections to your course. Keeping a STEM course relevant in an ever-changing world is a difficult task for a single professor, but enabling students to bring in the content they discover can immediately ensure that your class is staying up to date. Students can share videos, articles, or even simulations they find interesting for other students to learn from as well (Yellowdig for STEM).”

Trust the system! If it doesn’t work for you, LMS Discussion Threads are still waiting back in your shell.

For all Modalities

Something that Yellowdig does well is that it allows instructors to help students create a growth mindset. The ability to get points not only for posts and replies but also other types of engagement demonstrates to students that there are varieties of ways to participate that matter within a community. It’s ok to not have all the answers, to get things incorrect sometimes, and to have deep conversations that help us evolve our learning. So often in historical discussion boards, we graded upon correct answers, but in Yellowdig we want students to have a space to think critically about the course content.

Students can share text, video, articles, drawings, and more in the space giving them the ability to express their questions and knowledge in ways that are the most authentic to them.

Because of these features, Yellowdig works well in both online and face-to-face or immersion classrooms. You can use it in real-time in a classroom (or between sessions), or you can use it in asynchronous online courses, and, for once, all the conversation won’t happen on Sunday evenings between 10:30 and 11:59pm.

Grading

One of the beautiful things about Yellowdig is that it’s auto-graded based on the point system you assign to various activities. Despite Yellodig’s auto-graded feature, you can still check in the group and participate. You can also endorse conversations, and if you’d like, set up badges to acknowledge students for their hard work. You can also manually adjust points as you’d like for individual students.

Getting Started

If you’re interested in using Yellowdig in your courses, I highly recommended the Yellowdig instructor training course. It takes 1 hour to complete and will help you reframe how you see discussion in both your live and asynchronous online classes.

After you’ve done this one, there is a 15-minute short course that really lays the foundation for setting up a community in STEM-specific courses.

Additionally, the instructional design team in the School of Life Sciences Teaching Innovation Center can help you install and format Yellowdig in your Canvas course, and help you plan themes that guide the discussion in creative directions within your course content. Contact TIC@asu.edu to get started.

Stay tuned for Part 2: How to effectively use Slack Channels for online and immersion courses!

Post Author:

Lenora Ott is an instructional designer in the School of Life Sciences Teaching Innovation Center at Arizona State University. Lenora assists faculty with developing and launching their online courses and provides long term evaluation, redesign, and support for online coursework. Her passion is empowering faculty to create meaningful learning experiences for their students and themselves online. She has worked in higher education for 8 years and has a Master of Science in Global Technology and Development from Arizona State University and a Graduate Certificate in Educational Technology from Northern Arizona University.