How to use virtual whiteboards to collaborate

This post is written by Christina Bondi, Val Gaudreault, Zoe Langevin, and Robyn Paton at the Canada School of Public Service’s Digital Academy.

• The problem: Filling the gap for collaboration in a virtual team is hard.

• Why it matters: Giving everyone a voice and a chance to be creative is important.

• The solution: Virtual whiteboards with numerous capabilities can help.

Photo via Unsplash

Play is timeless and universal. Even working professionals can get a lot out of play. It embraces experimentation and iteration. You can tinker, test, make changes, and test again. Playing is also hands-on. You can build, organise, and share tangible products. Play is stimulating because folks are extremely focused and engaged in dynamic and creative work. At the CSPS Digital Academy's Accelerator, an intense hands-on programme where teams work to solve real business problems, we took a playful and active approach to learning and collaboration by using virtual whiteboards.

There are many intuitive and highly visual whiteboard tools built with remote and distributed collaboration in mind. Complex ideas and concepts can thus be easily communicated and understood. CSPS Digital Academy’s Accelerator team used Miro for activities, presentations, design sprints, collecting resources, and analysis.

"We took collaboration and interaction to another level and enabled participants from different branches, departments, and regions to learn and work together."

Fun features

There are sticky notes, comments, shapes, icons, tables, charts, images, webpages and so many more to tinker around with through virtual whiteboards! It’s about creativity and a hands-on approach. Sound intimidating or like a lot of work? Well, it isn’t your standard Word doc. It’s much more involved and requires some time and openness to explore, but the work pays off.

Collaboration nation

Accelerator participants engaged in a Miro board during How to Build a Backlog workshop.

When teams pivoted to working together virtually, we wanted to bring them together beyond just a Microsoft Teams call. Virtual whiteboards made sure that participants from all over Canada could be a part of conversations, access the same content, and contribute in a fun and meaningful way. We took collaboration and interaction to another level and enabled participants from different branches, departments, and regions to learn and work together.

Our virtual whiteboards served as co-working spaces, where participants could pop in at any time and easily brainstorm, document, exchange ideas, compile resources, and co-construct knowledge.

Participants had many opportunities to play and know each other on a personal and informal level. We planned many out-of-the-box, lighthearted icebreaker activities — like making a monster and picking a song that best described your feelings. A virtual whiteboard wasn’t just a space to work in, but also where people had fun and built community!

Masterpieces created in Make a Monster workshop

Participants playlist for the Discovery phase of the Accelerator programme

The design

Without too much time required or pre-existing design skills, people can create amazing visual artefacts using Miro.

“I think it's much easier to follow or retrace things with visual repairs and to remember information. When I create workshops like this, I can take people on a journey into an imaginary world, away from the government context! Since my brain is full of ideas and I tend to "think" with images, the term problem framing was really like the game of Clue where you have to find the where-when-how!” — Val Gaudreault (Digital Academy team member and Miro expert)

Clue board game inspired Miro board for Problem Framing workshop

Our virtual whiteboards came to life through active participation. Watching our boards grow and evolve in real-time was exciting! Folks can also collaborate asynchronously on Miro, as the easy access and evergreen quality of it allows participants to revisit, make changes or additions at any time.

Each sticky note, comment or image is linked to an individual. Looking at a virtual whiteboard chock-full of ideas, you can hear the voices of those who helped create it. Our participants left their personal, meaningful mark on each board, and created one giant collage of a Miro board together.

Participants share their feedback on our Introduction to Miro workshop

Empowering ownership

The CSPS Digital Academy’s Accelerator team may have put in place the foundation for collaboration using virtual whiteboards, but our participants certainly built it and made it their own. We wanted to empower folks to take ownership of their learning, creation, and transformation. Teams could continue working on their tasks afterwards, come back later and discuss with other teams with the help of virtual whiteboards.

People map and empathy map on Miro for Problem Framing workshop

Scalable collaboration

It was important for our team to create a space for participants to collaborate, play, have fun and ensure effective and efficient co-creation when working completely online. Miro worked well for us, but there are many other great tools out there to explore! Learning a new tool that involved a shift to something more digital and visual could be intimidating. But with an open mind and a small time commitment, people would understand its value and enjoy using it.

Just to demonstrate the breadth of what’s possible with online whiteboard tools, we have one last thing to share. In a single workshop alone, using Miro, we used almost 5,000 sticky notes. That's a lot of stickies! And that’s scalable collaboration!

This article has been shortened for Apolitical, read the full version of this article and more on the Canada School of Public Service’s Digital Academy’s micro-learning blog, Busrides.ca. Follow the Digital Academy on Twitter.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)