As online workshops have become more common, an ongoing challenge has been how to engage learners in the sessions. How do you recreate the participation and collaboration that happens when people are learning face-to-face?
Miro is a really useful tool for online facilitation, we’ve been using it in workshops for project managers. Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that facilitates real-time teamwork, regardless of participants’ physical locations, which was useful for our participants who were spread out across Aotearoa.
Source: www.miro.com
We were excited to see learners actively interacting with a variety of visual materials and generating their ideas in real time. This dynamic learning environment was great for explaining complex ideas and encouraging social learning through observing others’ contributions.
When introducing new tools in online facilitation, it is really important to ensure people are comfortable no matter their level of digital literacy. For this workshop, we provided the learners an opportunity to practice using Miro prior to the session and had a second facilitator on hand during the workshop to provide one-to-one support. It was great to see that everyone could actively participate and contribute to the workshop.
3 Tips for Successful Online Facilitation with Miro
If you’re thinking of using Miro for online facilitation, here are three tips for getting the best out of it:
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- Make sure it’s the right tool for your learning goals. Miro is best for when you need a high level of interaction, collaboration and sharing between participants.
- Give people time to get used to the tool with clear instructions and guidance (before the session if possible).
- Prepare, prepare, prepare! Set up your whiteboard spaces, make sure you know the tool, and do a practice run beforehand.
