Yellowdig Communities Outside of the LMS

IN THIS ARTICLE
Why create a Community?
Create a Community
Invite users to your Community

Instructors and learners can create their own Communities from inside Yellowdig (rather than via their Learning Management System) if their organization allows it. Some organizations might prohibit Community creation; others might permit Community creation with approval from the organization administrator; and others might allow unrestricted Community creation.

Why create a Community?

Yellowdig Communities aren't just for classes. Communities are simply places where individuals with common goals and interests learn from each other, regardless of whether this learning takes place within a class. Any of the following groups would be excellent candidates for Yellowdig Communities:

1. Student clubs (e.g., theatre club)
2. Student government (e.g., student activities association)
3. Intramural athletic groups (e.g., pick-up basketball league)
4. Study groups (e.g., microeconomics reading group)
5. Cultural, political, or religious clubs (e.g., African-American student union)
6. Instructor communities (e.g., for sharing teaching tips)
7. Research lab groups

Creating your own Community is a great way to share information about your group, build relationships with your peers, and recruit new members. Since Communities are generally limited to your institutional Network (e.g., "University of Yellowdig"), Yellowdig Communities are often more private than groups established on other platforms (e.g., Facebook groups). Yellowdig is preferable to many other platforms for other reasons too.  For example, we don't sell your data and we don't have any annoying ads.

Create a Community

1. Click on the Home icon at the top of the leftmost navigation.
2. Click on My Communities in the second-to-leftmost navigation
3. Click the CREATE COMMUNITY button.
4. Enter a Community Title in the corresponding field.
5. Set the Community Permission Level to "Private" or "Public".
   • If your Community is private, only users who have been invited directly by the Community Owner or Community Facilitator(s) can join.
     • If Discoverability is turned ON, all users within your institutional Network can find your Community, but only directly invited users can join your Community.
     • If Discoverability is turned OFF, your Community will be hidden from the Discover page.
   • If your Community is public, all users within your institutional Network can join with or without an invitation. Users outside of your institutional Network can join only with a direct invitation from the Community Owner or Community Facilitator(s).
     • All public Communities are automatically Discoverable.
6. If the Community Permission Level is set to "Private", indicate whether your Community will display in the Discover tab.
   • In most cases, we recommend that you enable Discoverability.

Please click here if you're unable to watch the video below.

Invite users to your Community

1. Inside your Community page, navigate to Members → Members List.
2. In the upper righthand corner of the page, click the Invite button (under Member Actions).
3. Enter the email address of the user you wish to invite. To invite multiple users at once, separate each of their email addresses with a comma and a space (e.g., "person1@yellowdig.com, person2@yellowdig.com, ...").
4. Indicate whether you are inviting the user(s) as a Facilitator.
   • Warning: only invite users you trust as Facilitators.
   • Facilitators have very broad permissions, including the ability to invite users, kick users out, and promote other users to Facilitator status.

Please click here if you're unable to watch the video below.