Abstract:

Todays classrooms have gone through rapid transformation due to new technologies, which enable students to be physically in different parts of the world while collaborating in teams in virtual classrooms. To keep pace with new technologies is not just a challenge for student participants, but also for teachers. The educators’ task is to prepare a new generation of creative and innovative individuals who will meet the high demands of many industries.

Student participants of the Agile Bootcamp course, which is offered by the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies at the Czech Technical University in Prague, used Miro and Figma for team-based collaborative learning. Working in this highly collaborative environment rests on principles which will be summarized in this article. One of the core principles of working in the collaborative virtual classroom is working together, but also individually. At first, students need to brainstorm and come up with their own ideas as a possible solution to the given problem, but later things come together, and they share their ideas and continue to develop the best ones together. At the beginning of the course, student participants receive templates in Miro and Figma for various activities in the Design Sprint. Each template has its purpose and structure, but it leaves some space around for sketches, ideas and quick iterations. Very often, it can be intimidating for students to share their ideas, if they are not completely ready to be shared. In Design Sprint, there is a time set for each activity and even if the ideas are not developed to perfection, this process teaches student participants to share these partly developed ideas. Many of them are then further developed together. Student participants learn to embrace the discomfort of turning in and sharing partially developed ideas. Doing these activities over and over (in iterations) makes student participants more skilled in requesting and responding to the feedback of their team mates. Such principles, identified based on three rounds of the Agile Bootcamp course, and experiences with conducting the course, will be described and summarized in the paper.

Keywords:

New technologies in learning, collaborative platforms, virtual classroom, Agile, Design Sprint.