Yellowdig Awards Panel

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 0:05
Hi, everyone, welcome to our session where we're going to be talking to our Yellowdig award winners. So to begin with, first of all Yellowdig Ward winner is that instructor that has created or could not be an instructor for that sake that has created a quality Yellowdig community, one of those vibrant one that is organic, and one that the students and instructors have a great time in. So I'm gonna go around the room around the panel, if you will, here and we're going to take some time to introduce ourselves. And so start out with I'm Debra Olberding. I'm the Community success consultant here at Yellowdig, Success Manager. I have my co worker with me, Janeen, if you'd like to introduce yourself.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 0:58
Hello! It's great to meet everybody. I'm Janine Galligan one of the success managers here and I am thrilled to be with this team. I'm disappointed in ourselves that we didn't bring our balloons and everything. But this is a great ending or next to last segment for the day because we're really celebrating our Yellowdig award winners, which are the folks in front of you, plus some other ones that couldn't make it, who will talk more about why they won their awards. So I will now pass it off to Julie if you could introduce yourself. Julie won a Yellowdig award for a community health score. That means that she had a vibrant community.

Unknown Speaker 1:42
Mm hmm.

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 1:43
Hi, everyone. I'm Julie loss, and I teach psychology and developmental classes at Missouri Southern State University. Glad to be here. Next up is Nicole. Come on down.

Nicole Stahl, Project Coordinator - UCF 2:00
Hi, I'm Nicole Stahl. I'm the project coordinator with the Pegasus Innovation Lab at the University of Central Florida. But I work very closely with our instructional design team. And I will go ahead and transfer it over to my colleague, Amy.

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 2:12
Hey, everyone. I'm Amy from University of Central Florida. Nicole and I won an award for our support of faculty. So we created a faculty community within Yellowdig to support how they use it. So it's been a good few semesters, looking forward to talking more. And I'm gonna nominate Wesley.

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 2:35
Hi, I'm Wesley voice. I'm with the University of Nebraska Lincoln in the College of Business. And I won for a community health score as well. So I'm looking forward to this chat, and I will pass it to Laura.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 2:50
Hi, I'm Laura Irish. I teach at the University of Minnesota. And I am actually in an in person, plant propagation lab. So I primarily teach the labs, which is just awesome. Oh, and I have the award for outstanding STEM community.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 3:06
Right, great champions in Yellowdig! There they are. Wonderful! Okay, let's go ahead and get started. So what drew you to Yellowdig in the first place? And we'll just open this up to the whole panel. Nicole, would you like to start? What drew you to Yellowdig?

Nicole Stahl, Project Coordinator - UCF 3:24
Sure. I don't actually, I don't know the Aimee. You kind of want to go first because it's kind of started with you and then kind of went over to me?

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 3:31
Sure. So in I'm trying to remember what year it was, I think it was 2020. Who knows at this point. I got a note from the executive director of of our center, who basically said he wanted us to look at discussion tools that went beyond the discussion tool that we have in Canvas. Like yes, it's fine. But we've been hearing a lot of things about all these tools coming out. We want to investigate those further. So I led a team of faculty to do that. We looked at I think 10 different tools we demoed, we tried them out, we rated them and all this. And I think it was the summer of 2020. Maybe we sent him a report that named our kind of our top three tools that we had recommended be further looked into. And Yellowdig was one of those tools, mainly because we thought Yellowdig was such a radical departure from what we had been experiencing with the traditional discussion that it could really offer something completely different than what we've been experiencing. So that that was the main reason why we recommended it in the first place. So anyway, time went by, you know, things went up and down. But finally, we managed to get in touch enough touch with Yellowdig to at least initiate a pilot so we can investigate it further. So we've done a pilot with Yellowdig now for summer, and fall and now the spring. So we're about this is our third time oing through it exploring it, asking faculty and students about it. So that's what drew us in the first place. We were basically said, Hey, we should be looking at these things.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 5:11
Nice. Thank you, Julie, how about you? What drew you to Yellowdig?

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 5:16
Well, I've been teaching online for 10 to 12 years. And I was, I could not stomach another semester of traditional discussion boards. And, you know, they not evolved much. And luckily, through COVID, our school started investing in some in a Digital Backpack. And I feel like it can get really easy to get just get like, complacent and comfortable. And I was like, I'm going, you know, sometimes you feel like an old dog learning new tricks, but I was like, I'm going to take the risk and try to learn something new. Because it is a risk. And I have been thrilled. Yep.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 6:01
Good, good. How about you, Wesley?

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 6:04
Well, I'm gonna have to echo them. To a certain extent, I think I was talking to a colleague about traditional discussion boards, I was complaining, and I think it was late 2019, about just the generic nature of them, and students flooding them and never coming back until the next ones do. And they said, Well, you should try this new to us tool called Yellowdig. They, they had great success with it. So I thought, okay, it's worth a try. Little did I know, it would basically completely transform course discussions, and really make them engaging and meaningful, when before they were just all about, let's check the box and disappear until next week. So happily using it since early 2020.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 6:50
Wonderful. And Laura?

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 6:53
Yeah. So I, of course, like many of you got thrown from in person to an online course, mid semester. So that was in 2020. And so that was really challenging. And then we threw together an online version of our class and a month and a half, to pile it over 2020 this summer. And I use traditional discussion boards, thankfully, for the way I set them up, it wasn't the really tedious one, post two response, you know, that's what we all are so used to, and I am going to follow Julian wisely, like horrible, right? Oh, the students didn't really engage as well. And it was just bad. But now fast forward, it was this past spring, we are in person for the first time, since so it's been almost two years. And my students would queue up and it's just me, I don't have a TA, they would queue up in lab, and I wouldn't be able to walk around the room, I couldn't do anything because they wouldn't talk to each other. And they wouldn't collaborate with each other in lab. So it's like, how can I make a safe place for them to ask questions for each other build community. And thankfully, one of my colleagues was piloting Yellowdig, last spring, told everyone about it in our department, and I was like, This is what I need. I'm going to try this out. So I just tried it out this fall, fell in love with it. The students did too. So that's kind of how I fell into it.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 8:09
Nice, great. Well, this next question is going to be for Amiee and Nicole. So you won your award for faculty community. And you're at the University of Central Florida, which we all of us who tuned in yesterday to the evening keynote, now recognize just how large a scale that is. Can you please tell us how Yellowdig has influenced how you support instructors? And we'll start with Amiee.

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 8:39
Sure, yes, like you said, we're a large institution. And we also have a particular culture like any school, our faculty have a lot of say so and how they set up their own their own courses, they like they like to test things out before they actually jump into them. So we really wanted to create a community for them, where they could collaborate, and ask questions and brainstorm together before they actually tried Yellowdig in their courses. So we I'll let Nicole kind of talk about the setup of, of our, our faculty community and and why it worked. So well.

Nicole Stahl, Project Coordinator - UCF 9:23
Yeah, cuz we really wanted to space for the faculty members to feel safe. That way, they could ask what questions they may have before giving it to their students. So we set it up when we first test it out in the summer of just our summit, or summer faculty. And then the fall we had a separate community to kind of start fresh go from there. And now when we're trying out the spring, since we've been doing it for a while we've kind of combined our Fall and Spring communities together. So it's been an interesting way to see how not only are the faculty learning how to use the Yellowdig, but it's also given us a chance to better learn how to do it so that we can better support our faculty. And going forward in the future of knowing how Yellowdig works, since it was kind of due to everyone, so no one felt left out. We also kind of posted a blog just recently on the Yellowdig site about what we did with our community that we'd be kind of happy to share out with everyone afterwards to kind of explains more of what we did and what we learned from it.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 10:21
Great, and I think Amy did put that in the chat. Thank you, Amy. Thanks, Amy. That's great. Okay, good. So, Laura, let's start with you how shallow dig transform the students learning experience. And I think you have a unique story about that, because of what you teach in the lab course that you connected it to.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 10:43
Yeah, so plant propagation is exactly like what it sounds like we propagate plants, and the students do experiments on plants. So in a typical semester, we have 15, experiments running, which is a lot for the students to kind of keep track of. But what they never did in the past was connect the lecture material to the lab material. So I teach with professors who do the lecture, and we're pretty separate, just because of the way the scheduling is for the university. But yeah, the students wouldn't really connect to the biological concepts of why their plants were doing what they're doing, even though I would, you know, I think I say things a million times in lab, but some people don't read or see it. And that's okay or hear it. But what's really cool now is that the students because of Yellowdig, I left it very freeform, which was not my intention. And the students just took off, and they started connecting to lecture. So they post photos of their lab experiment that was going on, they'd be in the mist room, or be in the greenhouse, post a photo and be like, this is going on, I don't quite understand. And people started chiming in, like, hey, we just learned about this in lecture, like, this is all about parenchyma cells, which is really fun, if any of you want to look into parenchyma cells. But anyway, yeah, for me, it was just great, because they were actually connecting to the biology, which was just absolutely wonderful. And then the reports were so much better to grade, because they actually were connecting it, finding scientific resources, which we all live in the age of very scary to me plant videos on Tiktok. So it was really great to get them to use social media platform with science.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 12:24
I remember seeing your community being so vibrant with all of the community and the pictures and photos of good plants and not so good plants.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 12:34
Oh, yeah. They definitely learned all about not good plants.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 12:38
Thank you, Julie. How about you? What would you say about your students learning experience in Yellowdig?

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 12:44
It is such it's genuine and organic interaction, opposed to just the the stifling. Like it still isn't forced interaction still Yes. But it's so much more enjoyable for both like myself and my students. I teach psychology. So we do a lot of sharing, you know, there's a place for learning the course material and the textbook, but then I kind of use Yellowdig is like, just a casual space. And I feel like my students are much more apt to...well, first are like already familiar with the social media format. So they seem like very comfortable, and it just feels very, it's kind of their element. And I feel like they're much more apt to like, disagree with each other and take some risks. Because it's, you know, the way I use my Yellowdig is it's just casual interaction, but focused on we do focus on coursework, but we try to tie in like real world events. So like Yellowdig is very fluid. You know, when we design our courses, we just, we may have it all set up at the beginning of the semester. And then things happen. And we're, I'm less apt to like change my course, because it takes a lot of work. So I really liked the fluidity of Yellowdig. So we can connect material to real world.

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 14:15
Oh, awesome. It doesn't get much better than that. That's for sure. Wesley, how about you Yellowdig transformation, the students learning experience, and how's that look for you is like.

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 14:26
Yeah, for sure. You know, it was previously mentioned that Yellowdig has a safe place for the faculty, but I've also found that it's a safe place for students where they are whatever reason more openly feel like they can discuss topics and you know, I guess to a certain extent that was possible before but maybe some of social media feel of it, or I'm not sure what it is, but they're very much open to discussing and being engaged with one another. And I think it's really a bridge the gap between an online course course and the face to face course. Whenever before those were much different now, of course, the different but there's a lot more consistency in my opinion.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 15:11
Thanks. Yeah.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 15:13
That's great! So as educators, we are all striving for deeper learning. Do any of you have any ideas how Yellowdig has helped your students create deeper learning? And I know, Julie, you mentioned that you use Yellowdig, casually, but have you seen any deeper learning exhibited from your students?

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 15:39
Definitely, one thing I do really appreciate about Yellowdig is my students can take the material of a Gen a gen ed class, and they can kind of tailor it to whatever is important to them, either their hobby, you know, a personal interest, or also like a career interest. So, you know, a student who's a political science major, is going to look at social psychology different than perhaps a student who's an education major, both using the same information or gonna see it through different lenses and find different applications. And I just think that's so powerful that they can take what they're learning, and then tailor it to what their interests are, and share about it.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 16:26
Yeah, because you think of the learning that's taking place when they're sharing it with all the others, right? So

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 16:33
Yeah, that's great! And that perception, it really gives you a window into understanding better understanding how students are perceiving the information.

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 16:45
Exactly. And then also what the fluidity is, again, as like life happens, we, you know, if you're teaching development, and something comes in the news about pertaining to development, you can say, Let's guys, let's discuss in an online course, without having to do a complete overhaul of an entire module.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 17:03
That's fantastic. That's fantastic. That's so interesting! Wesley, do you want to add on to that?

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 17:10
Yeah, sure. So being in the area of business, my Yellowdig communities often lead to students discussing their careers, or what's happening in the real world or in practice. So I, when I first started this in early 2020, we all know what was happening, or about to happen. And this was a prime example of when supply chains, which was a key topic, and most of my courses, were just a complete wreck. So plants are shut down, ports are backed up, this trickled all the way down to all of us. And students, especially in my role as consumers couldn't get the stuff they wanted. So this was a new topic for a lot of students. And this led to a really powerful linkage that was really leveraged in Yellowdig, where what we were discussing in class became highly relevant in the real world. And frankly, it continues today, with all that still going on. So this was a really, really strong area where I felt like deeper learning happened. And as an aside, I never thought I would talk about toilet paper so much in a course. Just at the time, made it a very hot topic, and one or two of my courses in Yellowdig. So these sorts of discussions would certainly not have been as fruitful without having Yellowdig to facilitate that.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 18:35
And I'm also imagining all the images of toilet paper that might have been brought in to Yellowdig. And the hoarding and, and the empty shelves. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Laura, how about you? How, how did you see that deeper learning?

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 18:53
Yeah, so I was thinking about figuring out examples from my Yellowdig page, and then I spent an hour just scrolling through and I was like, this isn't your time to be on social media review, Laura. But I came across one of my favorite things that happened this semester. So I teach 120 undergraduate students in the fall and 120 in the spring, and that's in four different labs sections. So these lab sections never cross with each other for lab. And what was really cool was some of our supplies, I love this supply chain issues didn't come in for our grafting lab. And so we had to and by we, I mean me very fast improvise with the students because our grafting clips didn't come in for tomato grafting, which Florida is huge with tomato grafting and lots of research comes out of Florida. But half the students so to the lab sections had to try to wrap their graphs with parafilm which is just this stretchy plastic. And it's very tedious because these stems are very small. And then the other half got to use grafting clips because they came in the day before a the second set of labs, and one of the students who had to use the parafilm, posted a photo of their very dead scion tops, I mean, just absolutely dead. And they made a poll which I loved on Yellowdig. And it was, I don't quite understand why mine weren't successful. But it looks like there might be a difference between those who were able to use parafilm versus those who were able to see us grafting clips. And so they did a poll of successful not successful based on using parafilm, and grafting clips. And it had 48 votes, which is huge for just that one poll. And then it had 38 comments of people just flooding in with, I think it might have been this, like, maybe you didn't connect the cambium. And remember this part in lecture. And so for me, it was just not just deeper learning of the subject material, but deeper understanding of just a tiny change can just grossly impact what you do with plants. And for a lot of the students ended up showing pictures like I've tried to graft at home. And now I finally understand why this didn't work. So for me, it was more making the connections to their own personal experiences, while also being able to see everybody else's stuff. Yeah. So for me deeper learning happened, just because they could collaborate across labs.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 21:14
That's a great story. I love that. I love that. Okay, let's see, let's think about what Yellowdig is all about. Right? Which is fun. Can you share how you and your students have had fun with Yellowdig or a specific story? Because, you know, I think we can all agree that that Yellowdig does offer the opportunity to have some fun. So Julie, would you like to talk about fun with Yellowdig.

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 21:42
Sure, one of the things I do with Yellowdig is we, since we have those casual interactions. You know, we we can learn through humor. So I have students post different psychology memes. And it's interesting to you know, they'll post something, you know, my favorite one is like, you know, Julie, who was driving the car last night is not the same Julie who's getting in the car for for school drop off, right? Because you get in and the habituation occurs and your music's blasting, you're like, Whoa, who was who was driving? That's right. So my students share, they share their memes. And then they say, I used to not understand what this meme was. And now they do understand it because they're making connections. I'm also I'm teaching a lifespan class this semester, and I thought, oh, my gosh, I should have this all share. Share our like, you know, our awkward middle school pictures, like what a great time to, like, connect with, you know, think about share and have a good, good jab with each other. And then also think back about okay, how did what were we experienced in middle school? And how does that relate to what the textbook says, is a common theme for middle school, things like that?

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 22:54
I love that. What about you, Aimee and Nicole, have your faculty in the community created had some has fun in Yellowdig?

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 23:02
So

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 23:05
I would say yeah, I just put a file in the chat. If everyone, anyone who wants to see we have one instructor who really wanted to personalize her whole course with with Yellowdig and our mascot Nitro. So I just put that we asked our graphic designer to create something. And so she puts this in the course whenever she wants to do Yellowdig prompt. So that's a really nice way to kind of brand Yellowdig in that way. But this particular person also, whoever mentioned the poll, Laura, I think mentioned the polls, the same instructor put a poll in the very first week about the our mascot has recently changed a little bit. So she was like, Do you like A, B, C, or D four different looks of the mascot and everyone voted and started really getting into it, the comments and all. And although this doesn't tie directly she's also psychology a psychology teacher. Although it doesn't tie directly to the content. It was a really excellent kind of first delve into it. She was clearly having fun with it being casual. And then people were chiming in about which ones they liked. We started noticing that the older people like me, preferred a certain look, the newer students like this look, it was just a fun way to add. As we've said, we're really big school. So it was a nice way to kind of feel like we all had something in common. So we enjoyed that.

Nicole Stahl, Project Coordinator - UCF 24:27
And also, just to add to that course, a lot of students were using Yellowdig and a more social aspect of using it to like plant study dates with each other and to get together, even though it was a fully online course. And kind of just sharing memes and everything else going on culturally in the world. They were doing it both for learning and for a social aspect as well.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 24:49
Great! Laura, I can imagine you and your students probably had some fun.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 24:53
Oh, yeah. Well, I had a lot of fun. I loved Yellowdig! Because I didn't have to sit there and grade right and wrong answers, which I want to say Amy put earlier in the chat. And that that was so fun for me. And then to see the students engage with each other. And then they started sharing like, Have you been to the Como conservatory? These are some photos of the conservatory now. And like this is when you can go and learn from the horticulturist there. And I learned so much about the students backgrounds, and not just their plant backgrounds, they would share just a little bit of like anecdotal personal experiences, and how that tied into plants. And honestly, I learned so much about propagation of plants that I refuse to purchase, because they're expensive, but my students got very into Planned Parenthood. Over Yeah, COVID. So I've had so much fun watching them, and then to students to different labs to separate, I don't know, just randomly came up to me and said, they loved scrolling Yellowdig. And that's what they are in the roommates would do with scroll Yellowdig at night, just like before they went to bed because they just wanted to see what everyone was posting and what was going on. So I think that they must have been having fun because they were sharing it with people who weren't even in the class. But

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 26:10
I would say so I think that's,

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 26:13
That's pretty cool. I think that we're making some deeper connections right now and having some fun, hopefully, I do want to give Aimee an opportunity to build on your comment in the chat. Did you want to and that Laura just connected to?

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 26:29
Oh, sure. Let me just make fully sure what I said okay. Oh, okay. Well, so we gave a survey to students. Each semester, we just kind of wrote up a report about it. And that was the theme that was that was pervasive throughout the student perspective was that this allow it like, less pressure, like they felt less pressure, and they could speak more freely and more openly. And they weren't speaking to a rubric, or they weren't speaking it just this this theme of kind of freedom was pervasive throughout, you know, all of the courses. So and I think that's the other part, when students are discussing, and they know that there isn't another person on the other end, that's going to give them a grade. That in Yellowdig, they're really earning their own grade, there's an empowerment element to it, too, I think. So I think it helps people speak freely, because they're they they know if I post this and you know, it's on the up and up, this will earn points, and I might get comments. So I think it's just a loosening of the norms.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 27:46
Thank you. So with that, let's connect into our next question. Because it sounds like that was one way that Yellowdig was helping students be successful. So starting with Wesley, are there any ways that you've seen Yellowdig set the students up for success in your experiences?

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 28:08
I think so. So I'll kind of piggyback off that open atmosphere feeling we have, where it leads to a much more, I guess, an approachable setting where students are more apt to get involved more apt to ask questions if they have it. And that's both of me and each other. So from my experience, they're less likely to hide. And if something's not clear, actually ask questions. I don't find myself wondering, Where is, which used to happen, especially online classes, whenever there's this lack of engagement, and I'm trying as hard as I can to get everyone to get involved. So I can help them more, they can help each other too. And even beyond that, this is probably anecdotal evidence from my own experience, but it seems like Yellowdig is almost starting as a launchpad for relationships beyond the course where students can, you know, say, you know, let's talk about this later. Because, of course, the course is going to end at some point. So they may make arrangements to communicate the course. And so maybe it's a networking tool too.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 29:21
I just want to chime in really quick. Three of my students in different lab sections became roommates this following year, because of Yellowdig. Because they saw each other's plants. And

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 29:34
so now they have this nice plant room that they're all share.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 29:38
They're gonna move in in August, but they pre-planned just because of that networking outside of

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 29:42
It's pretty fantastic. Yeah, they're a

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 29:46
That's one huge asset, I think for Yellowdig is that students are waiting on an instructor to, to answer a question or not all interaction is is facilitated by the instructor so, you know, as an instructor, it takes a lot of pressure off, to be to, to answer everyone's question and be everything to everyone. It's so great to see students chiming in saying, I saw this article, what do you guys think? Or I think this article is you no need to go in the trash and discuss. And it's, it's really great to see them taking in like active role in their own learning, because we know their time is valuable. That's what got me with why I switched discussions, because I remember feeling disrespected, grading them. And then I thought, well, if you feel that way, grading them, how do you think your students feel writing them? And I was like, something's got to change.

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 30:45
Yeah, and I will add one more thing to that as well. It's It's more meaningful. Now. It's not so much them just saying what they think I want here.

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 30:52
Right, authentic? Exactly.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 30:56
This is great! Laura, do you want to add anything to this question about setting up students for success?

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 31:05
Well, I love that this has gone beyond the class. And what I wrote my notes for myself, were all about how they succeeded more in class. So I guess we'll talk about that really quick. What was really great as Yellowdig was set up only for the labs really, or at least that's how the premise of it was, but because it became very student led, all of a sudden, they started putting one student initiated a term of the day. So they would put a definite because a biology class really, and so there's lots of terms. So they put it with a definition that people started feeding on the thread every day, a new term was coming up, just so they could prep for the exams and do better that way. And overall, it was just they started using Yellowdig for the sum of their extra resources on their reports, because they're like, Oh, I saw this on Yellowdig, that this is how someone else's experiment turned out. And I think, you know, then they would connect it to something else they learned. But yeah, just that open, authentic conversations they were having with each other, really help them engage with the information. And then I am yeah, thinking about more, I'm more impressed that they made lasting relationships outside of class, and formed study groups, without actually meeting people in person, which was kind of fun to do.

Unknown Speaker 32:18
do.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 32:19
That is impressive. Aimee, do you want to add on to this?

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 32:25
Sure. I mean, our circumstance was a little bit different, because we were managing a group of faculty that were learning how to teach Yellowdig in order to help their students succeed. So we were kind of one step back. The main way that by for us, by supporting our faculty throughout our Yellowdig community that we set up, we really kind of helped model the kinds of behaviors and and skills and things that they experienced that they then kind of transferred to their own students. There was a particular course that was about the internships, it was an internship course. So all of the students were actually out in the field doing things. And they used Yellowdig, to report what had happened, if they had a question, like, I don't know how to handle this. So it was it was really great there. But then that fed into the final kind of combination paper that they wrote, they could go back to Yellowdig. And kind of see, well, what how did i How was I feeling about this two months ago? How do I feel about it now. So it was not only a great way to gauge their sense of growth, but it was also good to see how other people were doing and feeling a little bit better. Someone else was also not sure about something. So that's what we've seen.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 33:44
That's really interesting. Nicole, do you want to anything come to your mind?

Nicole Stahl, Project Coordinator - UCF 33:49
Yeah, as the group's kind of talking, it made me think of another example, one of our faculty members, is in nursing. And she teaches a non academic course that any of the students who are in that program get added to, and she's actually been in the pilot for all three semesters now using the same community. And she's using it as like a type of mentorship. So those who kind of been to the program first, are now there to give advice, historical knowledge for those who are coming in new to the program. So she's been able to kind of have all that historical knowledge in the community, for those new new students who go through and connect with with each other with one another that they may not have been able to do before since it's a fully online program.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 34:30
That's pretty cool. So I'm designing that community helping that community. Well, we got a live hot question for all of you. And it says, I know this is a learning engagement summit, but I keep hearing you all get some energy from your own teaching from using it. Has that impacted other parts of your courses or teaching so Brian verdine, our academic VP or VP of Academic Engagement notices that you're really getting excited, which I love that because also having been a Yellowdig award winner myself, I got really excited about it. So starting with Julie, has it impacted your teaching in this class that use Yellowdig or elsewhere?

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 35:23
It has like tremendously because I, you know, I was thinking instead of teaching to my students, I'm teaching with my students. So I, you know, I feel like I'm connecting and having those authentic conversations that are that flow. And it's less about, you know, someone mentioned, like a safe space. So I don't go into Yellowdig thinking, who made their points and who's making, you know, well thought out points and who's speaking off the cuff, I just go in there, like open minded excited that they are finding information that they're connecting with. So to me, I really was getting a little bogged down with, you know, I remember, I was just getting bogged down thinking, maybe I need to do something different. And it really kind of has like, reignited a fire in me to connect with students, especially being a distance learning teacher, instructor. You know, I missed that face to face. And this is what this is a really, it's not a perfect substitute. But it's a really great step in the right direction to reconnecting with students.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 36:35
Oh, that's fantastic. How about Wesley? What do you, how do you respond to that question? Has it impacted your teaching?

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 36:42
I think so it's, it's allowed me to be more in tune with what the students have going on or what they're doing, or maybe their own knowledge or experience. So from a teaching perspective, that allows me to maybe focus more on one thing or less on another if they're more comfortable with that. And then we just have this social media platform where, you know, I'm not a gatekeeper anymore, I could be more involved, or less involved if I don't want to stifle a conversation. So I think it all really comes together to allow for a much more open situation. And you know, I would recommend that you be involved in your, your Yellowdig communities, give accolades, give emojis, you don't have to respond to everything, because I think we all know that's going to, potentially in the conversation real quick at times, but I think all of this put together is helped us all.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 37:26
That's awesome. And then Laura, we could see your enthusiasm.

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 37:41
Yeah, so I only teach this one class, because it's so big. And I also have to take care of plants in the greenhouse. There's lots of moving parts. But it's definitely made me more excited to go into lab. So I teach labs two on Tuesday, Tuesday on Thursday, and then a Wednesday night lab in the fall also for grad students. But I'd be so excited to go on Monday, and I read through Yellowdig and scroll through it. And then I'd be able to pick out things like Hey, I saw this was brought up, like let's talk about it. So for me, that was way more fun than trying to read the reports and say think like, did they understand this? Do they really know what a note is? You know, but when it was on Yellowdig, I'd be like, Look at all these cool photos. Let's talk about them. So just bringing it all back. For class for me live was really great. I am teaching with a different Professor this spring, and he wants to really transform Yellowdig into something else. So I'm kind of excited to see what happens. It'll be a little more structured with clear post, but I have a feeling that he will, he will see how I want. I would love it. So yeah, I'm just kind of excited to work with new professors and try to get them engaged with Yellowdig and just see what we can do with it to help the students.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 38:54
That's pretty fun. Yeah, me and Nicole, do. Are there any things that you want to add? We've got about five more minutes left. And anything you want to add to this question or anything else? Amy?

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 39:07
Well, I actually have a question from the other panelists if that's okay. So it just came up today. So we're starting our spring and I'm working with different faculties in Yellowdig. I had a question for is that okay, can I ask the teaching faculty here? When you set up your communities? Do you go with the default points, system and everything or do you tweak it? That's my that's my question. Right now someone is kind of saying, Well, I want it to be really low stakes this time, like are super low stakes. So we're even talking about making the points lower than last time and I'm not sure about that. So if anyone has any feedback about how they set up their points, that'd be helpful.

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 39:56
Who wants to take this one?

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 39:58
I'm sure Janeen, and I could

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 39:59
Yeah, we're like we really want to. But that's not how you asked. So

Laura Irish, Teaching Specialist - UMN 40:04
I followed mostly the advice that I was given from my Yellowdig people who are great, except I did change the word requirements slightly increased them. Because I was going to I was getting lots of pushback from the other people I teach with who were like, that's not enough words. So I increased that. It didn't seem to inhibit the students at all. But we left the points set up, I think it was like 1000 a week and the 250 buffer. But now that Yellowdig is going to have the you can combine two weeks together, we're actually going to increase the points. But I think we're also going to just like inflate everything to match that, if that makes sense. Because the instructor wants the numbers to equal 1000. But anyway, so I'm still sticking with pretty much what was initially recommended, because it works super, super well.

Julie Moss, Adjunct Psychology Instructor - MSSU 40:58
Like what's recommended also, just so students don't confuse Yellowdig points with actual test points. They're almost like tokens, I call them tokens, sometimes more than points. Just to avoid some confusion.

Wesley Boyce, Assisstant Professor of Practice, UNL 41:17
I'm generally stuck with the Yellowdig recommendations. I've debated that, and I've shifted around here and there. But I haven't changed too much just because I figured and they've done the research. So

Janeen Galligan, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 41:30
Well, is that good Aimee?

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 41:32
Yes, that's helpful. Thank you.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 41:34
Nicole, anything you want to end with?

Nicole Stahl, Project Coordinator - UCF 41:39
I was just going to do a funny anecdote of this is we're talking about excitement and spreading the word with things. Since Amy and I are so close in the weeds with the pile and everything. Sometimes we forget who else talking about on the outside, and one of our co workers came up to us and she she was she wasn't annoyed. But she was like I was at my book club. And half the book club was taken up because these two people kept talking about this new thing called Yellowdig. We're like, oh, the word is getting out. And people aren't excited about it. So I just figured I would share that.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 42:11
That's awesome. Well, we are coming to the end of our time together. So basically, thanks for being champions of Yellowdig. This was so enjoyable! And again, thank you for making a difference for your students. And it sounds like you're having some fun along the way with your students. So win win, that's for sure.

Brianna Bannach 42:37
Sorry for the pause. Thank you all this session was really great. It really energized me and makes me happy to work at Yellowdig so thank you for sharing your experiences and congratulations again for being Yellowdig award winners. There's definitely a reason we picked you all you're clearly trying hard to engage your learners and being great instructors and and designers and all your your titles. Thank you for attending the summit and thank you panelists for joining. See you soon!

Aimee deNoyelles, Senior Instructional Designer - UCF 43:06
Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Debra Olberding, Community Success Manager - Yellowdig 43:09
Thank you, bye bye.