Not all students have the same level of confidence using visual collaboration tools. When new students come into MURAL for the first time, they sometimes feel overwhelmed and distracted by seeing the full user interface.
With this Facilitation Superpowers™ feature — custom toolbar — educators can choose which visual thinking tools are available to students in a mural to simplify the experience and focus their attention on only what’s needed for the class.
The Custom Toolbar is great to use in two main scenarios:
Onboarding students to MURAL
Start off by allowing students to experiment with one collaboration tool at a time and add more and more visual collaboration tools as students become comfortable collaborating in a mural. This will keep students from being overwhelmed at the start of your class and keep them engaged and excited for you to release more functionalities as the class goes on.
More control over how students are collaborating
Depending on the exercise you may want students to only bring in specific elements such as images, or sticky notes. Use the Custom Toolbar to ensure students are focused and participate in the way you envisioned.
Here’s how:
Hover over the boxed in check-mark icon on the top toolbar and toggle the feature on
Select the visual thinking tools you would like students to have access to in the meeting or workshop, and hide everything else
Select “see preview” to view what your students’ experience will be
Your students will only be able to see and use the visual thinking tools you have selected for more focused collaboration.
*Specifications:
Text is enabled by default when the feature is first toggled on.
All facilitators will still be able to use and see all features in the side toolbar, regardless of what’s been disabled for collaborators.
If a facilitator wants to introduce additional visual thinking tools as the session progresses, they can update the list of tools collaborators can see and use in real-time!
The collaborators will receive a notification that the facilitator has customized controls for this session.
If certain tools have been disabled by the facilitator, a collaborator will be able to see “tools hidden by the facilitator” by hovering over the three dots on the side toolbar beneath the available features.
Regardless of what’s been disabled, a collaborator will still be able to:
Copy and paste, or duplicate any element in the mural that isn’t locked
Paste or drag in other content from outside the mural (from computer, links from the internet, other murals)
Use shortcuts — except double click to add a sticky note if “text” has been disabled