Abstract
Purpose: To highlight the potential and demonstrate the use of Miro, a visual collaboration platform software for teams, as a technological tool for teaching and learning in our “new normal”. Background: While online learning has abundant evidence to support its use and efficacy as a means to optimise learning under intentional and planned circumstances, the reactive shift to virtual classroom settings for health and safety in 2020 catalysed the education industry’s online growth and, perhaps, greater acceptance. What had been tentative supplementary accessories to subtly complement dominant traditional forms of teaching (i.e., lecturing, authoritative, rigid) became primary and novel tools that were seemingly learner-centred, social, collaborative, stimulating, and unrestricted by geographical constraints. Methods: Operating within a primarily synchronous learning environment via Zoom and informed by social constructivism, where the educator prioritises the teaching persona of a facilitator and co-learner over that of “the expert”, the goal of each class was to create a community of learning where students would feel safe and comfortable to take risks, participate actively, and co-construct knowledge. Miro examples from the author’s experiences teaching research methods and performance psychology to undergraduate students will be used to support this presentation. Conclusions: Educators may acquire skills to, (1) scaffold learning and support metacognitive awareness, (2) inspire intellectual camaraderie and opportunities to think critically as a community, (3) create a setting for students to immediately practice skills learnt following theoretical explanations, and (4) concurrently assess learning, provide feedback, and clarify students’ conceptions, ideas, and beliefs on a given subject.