I’ve been giving some thought to how you could undertake an effective brainstorming exercise in an online meeting. I was distracted for a while by a distant memory that the word ‘brainstorming’ had been deemed offensive to epileptics and that we should now use the term ‘thought showers’ instead, but thankfully it seems that this whole idea has been rejected – see TrainingZone. Anyway, a brainstorming session will usually include these steps:
- defining the problem
- the rapid generation of ideas (it’s important that no participants are allowed to evaluate any of the ideas generated during this step)
- sifting out of the most obviously inappropriate ideas
- evaluation of the top contenders
The electronic whiteboard is the obvious tool to use for this process. If you have an object-orientated whiteboard tool, which allows contributions to be deleted or moved around once they have been pasted onto the whiteboard, then this is ideal: simply summarise the problem at the top of a blank screen and allow participants to type away; when they’re done, you’ll be able to work together to remove the least feasible options and then place the best contenders in order.
Without an object-orientated tool (and Webex might be the market leader but it still doesn’t have an object-oriented whiteboard), you could either divide up the whiteboard so each participant has their own space, or act as scribe for contributions received through audio or the chat facility. You still can’t drag and drop the various contributions around to place them in order, but you can use the annotation tools to cross out the least feasible options and mark the best contenders. A little less elegant but should do the job.
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Thanks for the info. I’m motivated to give it a try. Thanks for the push.
Mike
I have been searching for an online application like this. If I interpret your post correctly, this application doesn’t exist? Or are you saying go find an object oriented whiteboard tool?
Thanks,
Laurie Webster
Lots of tools do support an object-oriented whiteboard, just not Webex. I know that Elluminate and Centra do and probably more. Worth putting on the checklist before choosing a system.
The benefits of an object-oriented whiteboard are immense from the point of view of group collaborative thinking, learning and teaching. Using Elluminate (by way of example), I have had groups create, organise and cluster ideas, build learning routes and pathways, conduct pyramid analysis, draw mind maps, dynamic action plans, timelines and all manner of outputs of shared thinking.
To be a little more playful I’ve mounted fully interactive draughts (checkers) games and even had groups use a snakes-and-ladders board to support a quiz. The whiteboard is prepared with a background image of a game board (I’ve used snakes and ladders but it could be Ludo, Backgammon or anything else you fancy just for fun). I place the required number of counters on top of the background image (or to the side) in an appropriate ready position for the start of a game. On my desktop I keep open a PowerPoint slide as a holding station for images or text that I may want to place in the active whiteboard. For example, when playing a board game I have ready made a set of all possible combinations of two dice and, selecting at random, I can copy and paste straight into the whiteboard – the effect is very realistic and satisfying.
Now this only proves the feasibiity, but you can use your imagination to extrapolate how you might use it – wiring diagrams, sequencing exercises, building a hierarchy, creating a psychometric diagram and so on and so on. If you want to play in the sandbox let me know, and I’ll be happy to organise a free session if there is sufficient interest. Most of all, however, I’d like to hear how others have used an object-oriented whiteboard to give rein to their creativity.
Another useful presentation technique in an object-oriented whiteboard is masking and unmasking. You’d be surprised at the effects you can achieve simply by covering objects with a borderless box in the background colour, and revealing/hiding them selectively to show/conceal areas of the screen.
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