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Digital Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning



In classrooms, students and instructors can use whiteboards to brainstorm, create connections between ideas, and draw representations. Digital, online whiteboards provide additional features that can enhance active learning in face-to-face and online courses. In this article, we will discuss how a digital whiteboard can provide opportunities for collaboration between students and instructors.

Table of Contents

Accessibility Note Warning!

Just like in-class whiteboards, doing an activity on a whiteboard exclusively means it will not be accessible to students using screenreaders. Find out more about accessibility and digital whiteboarding in this article.

Getting Started

There are many different digital tools available for online whiteboarding. To get started, determine your learning or instructional goals and then choose a tool. What will you want students to do and learn?

At NC State, there is one digital whiteboarding tool that is part of our enterprise suite of instructional tools:

  • Zoom Whiteboard & Shared Screen Annotation (available within Zoom meetings): If you are a former user of Jamboard, the Zoom Whiteboard has many similar features and includes extensive templates.

We also recommend Miro as an option for whiteboarding activities. Miro is approved for use at NC State but is not part of our supported enterprise digital tools.

Digital Whiteboarding Ideas

Tutorials and Guides

Zoom

Miro

All articles/resources below take you to Miro support.

Activities & Examples

Concept Mapping

Concept map describing the male-up of atoms to show an assignment example.

Concept maps are visual representations of information, serving as versatile tools ranging from graphic organizers to flow charts. Particularly beneficial for students with a visual learning preference, they excel in elucidating complex topics by illustrating connections between ideas

Collaborative group work with concept maps is highly effective, allowing participants to collectively construct maps centered around a specific topic. This collaborative effort unveils shared thoughts and branches, fostering deeper understanding.

Here are some ideas for utilizing concept maps:

  • Charts
  • Graphic Organizers
  • Flowcharts
  • Venn Diagrams
  • Timelines
  • T-Charts

Image Annotation

Blank map of North Carolina’s river basins where students have left small blue comment boxes to label the various river basins in the state.

Although digital whiteboards may not be the foremost tool for image annotation, they offer a swift and straightforward method to foster student collaboration around visual content.

Utilizing the comment feature, students can annotate images, with their names automatically recorded within the comment. Moreover, students can engage in dialogue by replying to existing comments left by their peers.

Websites and Articles with Whiteboarding & Active Learning Teaching Ideas

Workshop Information

Digital Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning

If no workshops are available for registration, you can request an instructional consultation from LearnTech about this topic.

References

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (2009). Active learning: An introduction. ASQ higher education brief, 2(4), 1-5.

Fuchs, Kevin, Preparing Students for Success in a Changing World: The Role of Virtual Whiteboards in the Modern Classroom (March 4, 2021). Education Quarterly Reviews, Vol.4 No.1 (2021), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3797677

Inouye, C. Y., Bae, C. L., & Hayes, K. N. (2017). Using whiteboards to support college students’ learning of complex physiological concepts. Advances in physiology education.

Schroeder, R. (2008). Active Learning with Interactive Whiteboards: A Literature Review and a Case Study for College Freshmen. Communications in Information Literacy, 1 (2), 64-73. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2008.1.2.10

Concept maps. Learning Center. (2022b, July 11). https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/using-concept-maps/

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