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Genuine Community for Learners and Educators with Yellowdig
Developing a close-knit online community in courses with large enrollment
Listen to the podcast here: https://anchor.fm/yellowdig/episodes/Conversation-with-Ben-Leffel-UC-Irvine-e96i56
The University of California, Irvine
Department of Sociology
Level of Course:
Undergraduate
Instructor:
Ben Leffel
Course Subject:
Economics and Geopolitical Risk, China and the Global Order
Number of community participants:
~200 per course
"It is possible to make the online course as interactive as the traditional in-person course."
Between Fall 2017 and Spring 2019, Ben Leffel used Yellowdig as a Sole Instructor for 3 sections of “China and the Global Order” and as a Teaching Assistant for 5 courses on economics and geopolitical risk at UCI’s Merage School of Business. His online “China and the Global Order” course had an average enrollment of over 200 students. Yellowdig was a graded component of Ben Leffel’s courses.
By The Numbers
1600
Students
5.86
Conversation Ratio
8
Course Communities
Results
The average conversation ratio (Comments / Posts) in courses for which Ben Leffel served as a T.A. was 3.22. In contrast, the average conversation ratio in Ben’s solo-taught “China and the Global Order” courses was 5.86. By instantiating a number of Yellowdig best practices and expertly steering his course Communities, Ben increased his Communities’ conversation ratios, thereby achieving his goal of facilitating more genuine and sustained conversations among large numbers of students.
Graphs from Professor Leffel's course illustrating the volume of posts and comments in his Yellowdig communities.
In Spring 2018, however, Ben recalibrated Yellowdig with weekly point limits, resulting in an increase in engagement: The average Community Member was connected to 21.5% of their fellow Members (~53 out of 246). Students’ baseline weekly activity was higher on average and less variable, and peaks in activity became less dramatic over time. This pattern is more conducive to student engagement and community-building, since students are interacting steadily over time and connecting with more of their peers.
Ben Leffel prefers Yellowdig to other discussion platforms because he finds Yellowdig more conducive to genuine conversations between students. He also favors Yellowdig’s precise quantification of student participation, and he uses Yellowdig to automatically measure participation in his large online communities. Ben's overall success is due to his fine job in building robust and intimate communities in his large online classroom environments.
[It's] much like replicating the Socratic method in large lecture halls for use in the digital learning environment.
~
Instructor Ben Leffel
About the Instructor
Ben Leffel
Ph.D. Candidate (UC Irvine)
Instructor, UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business, Ph.D. Candidate
Ben Leffel is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at UC Irvine. His dissertation research centers on global climate change policy. He has published 4 peer-reviewed articles and 14 op-eds and commentaries on climate change mitigation, U.S.-China relations, and city diplomacy, among other topics.
About the Institution
The University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine was founded in 1965 with a mission to catalyze the community and enhance lives through rigorous academics, cutting-edge research, and dedicated public service (https://uci.edu/about/).
