Using Yellowdig in Marketing Courses: An Analysis of Individual Contributions and Social Interactions in Online Classroom Communities and Their Impact on Student Learning and Engagement

Authors

Mary C. Martin Ph.D., Fort Hays State UniversityFollow
Michael J. Martin Ph.D., Fort Hays State UniversityFollow
Andrew P. Feldstein DPS, Fort Hays State UniversityFollow

Abstract

Students in four marketing classes participated in a pilot program where they used Yellowdig in the classroom. Yellowdig is a private network for collaboration targeted towards educational institutions to increase student engagement. Yellowdig seeks to engage students using a broad array of resources including videos, news articles, blogs and more. It offers a Facebook-like experience (a platform the majority of students are very familiar with) for ease of use. In the classes, Yellowdig was used for two purposes: as a way to create a community inside and outside of the classroom and as a means by which students create and share course-relevant content throughout the semester. To achieve those goals, students posted items of interest relating to course content to Yellowdig and commented on and up-voted others’ posts. Yellowdig data was used to capture insights about students’ individual contributions and social interactions. The manuscript summarizes academic literature on social learning and social media, followed by a description of Yellowdig and how it was used in the marketing classes to benefit student learning and engagement. The results of quantitative analyses, including data visualization and social network analysis, are used to help educators understand both individual contributions to and social interactions in the network. In addition, multiple linear regression results suggest that engagement through Yellowdig activities does benefit student learning. Strategies for instructors to enhance student engagement and learning using these types of analyses are provided.

Document Type

Article

Source Publication

Global Journal of Business Pedagogy

Publication Date

6-22-2017

Volume

1

Issue

1

First Page

55

Last Page

74

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Rights

Notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code).

Comments

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Recommended Citation

Martin, M. C., Martin, M. J., & Feldstein, A. P. (2017). Using Yellowdig in Marketing Courses: An Analysis of Individual Contributions and Social Interactions in Online Classroom Communities and Their Impact on Student Learning and Engagement. Global Journal of Business Pedagogy, 1(1), 55–74.