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Question

Best solution for individual work ?

  • 25 June 2024
  • 6 replies
  • 43 views

Hello!

I have a teacher who has been using SVI Solutions’s VIA (a sort of Zoom alternative) for teaching for years. One of her favourite features was the Activity module which allowed her to give a unique copy of an activity to each student, on which they would work individually with no access to one another’s copy, and then, at the end of the activity, she could project any one of the different copy for the rest of the group to see.

Now, because of security concerns, we can no longer use VIA in our institution, I have been trying to recreate what she could do using a mix of Teams and Miro. For the activities, I had in mind to create different frames for each students and they could work on their copy. Then, once the activity’s completed, she can simply zoom on it and use “ Bring everyone to me “ to show the work to the rest of the class. 

The problem that I run into is that the teacher would want students not to be able to see each other working during the activity. I’ve been exploring a bit, but, outside of creating a unique board for each student, I have not found a great workaround. I have read about the Breakout Activities that are currently in beta testing but I’m not sure those would prevent students from spying on one another anyway (which would be kind of important to know before I try to convince my institution to upgrade our Miro plan). 

 

So, long story short, any idea on how I could prevent students from spying on each other’s work during the activity, but still be able to show the work to the group once the activity’s over? Ideally, we would not go for the one-board-per-student solution since the loading time would make this nearly impossible to manage for a group of 20+ students.

 

Thank you! 

6 replies

Paul Snedden
Userlevel 5
Badge +3

Hi @Simon Côté-Massicotte welcome to the community.
It sounds very much like you need to use the Breakout Frames functionality. Whilst still in Beta, I can personally attest to its amazingness. You can find more details here

".ǝuɐᒋ ssᴉꟽ ʻuʍop ǝpᴉsdՈ"
S

I finally saw the paragraph that mentions that you can lock specific users to specific frames, that’s pretty interesting. 

Now, the issue is, it says that the function is only available to select users with specific plans. Is that entirely random? I don’t see myself asking for a budget for a couple of premium plans only to find out I am arbitrarily not part of the selected users group.

Robert Johnson
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Simon Côté-Massicotte - Greetings from Saskatchewan /=S=/

The Breakout frames feature is available for the Education Plan, so you could go through the application process (can take up to 10 days) to see if UQAT meets the qualifications, which would give each teacher/educator that applies a 100 seat plan for FREE, forever. You can read more about the plan in the here (the application form can be found in the article by searching for “application form”):

https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017730473-Education-Plan

Note:

To see a comparison of all features by plan, go here. 

 

Alternative Solution to Breakout frames

Should you get on a plan, but are still unable to get the breakout beta feature, another solution could be to set up the conditions in which anyone with the link to the board could create a copy of it. In doing so, you remove your need for creating a copy for each student.

Here’s how this could work:

  1. You create a master board that has:
    1. the frame a student would need to do their activity on
    2. a link back to the main frame where they would later copy-paste their work to.
  2. Set your master board’s Team access (and Visitor access, if the student is not a member of your team) to “Can view”. This means that, only the board owner (and Co-owner, if on a Business or Enterprise plan) will have edit access.
  3. Now you need to ensure that other people can copy this master board. Instructions on this can be found in this article: How to allow or restrict copying and exporting boards and content
  4. Now the board is ready to be copied anyone with the link.

So, how do the students get the board into their own Miro account (free or any plan)?

You could either:

  1. Send the a link to the board and instruct them to open it, click on the board title, and then use the Duplicate action (you could include a link to the How to duplicate a board article).
  2. Or you could use the copyBoardId URL parameter, so that, when they click on your board link, it is automatically duplicated/copied to their team.

Here it is in action

 

If you open this board, you cannot edit it, but you can click on the board title, and then the Duplicate button:

Using copyBoardId

Here’s how it works:

The board link:
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVK4c-_uU=/


In the above example, the unique board ID is: uXjVK4c-_uU=


To create your auto-copy link, add the board ID to:
https://miro.com/app/?copyBoardId=


So, here is the link you would send to your students:
https://miro.com/app/?copyBoardId=uXjVK4c-_uU=

Test it → https://miro.com/app/?copyBoardId=uXjVK4c-_uU=

 

Cheers!

Visual Thinker | Volunteer Community Moderator
Robert Johnson
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Simon Côté-Massicotte - One more thing with mentioning, should you end up with an Education Plan with many students as member of a team space, you should definitely consider configuring the team space’s permissions so that only the person who creates a board or project can see it by default. Doing this solves a number of issues, including:

  1. Everyone’s dashboard not getting cluttered up with everyone else’s stuff! While you can filter your dashboard to only see boards created by you, the same cannot be done for projects.
  2. Everyone’s content will be private until they explicitly share it.

More on the default settings here → https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017572174-Default-sharing-settings

Visual Thinker | Volunteer Community Moderator
S

Thank you @Robert Johnson! I believe we already have an education plan for our university, which means that I do not have access to the beta. Any word on when that feature will become accessible to everyone?

That being said, your alternative solution seems workable, but the issue of showing each student’s work remains. I guess that could be fixed by simply having the student share their screen in order to limit loading time/time spent looking for the right board.
 

Thanks for the tip for the team spaces! I did find it really cluttered and I am glad to learn that there is a way to fix it.

Robert Johnson
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Simon Côté-Massicotte - You’re welcome!

Re: 

but the issue of showing each student’s work remains.

Once the individual activity is over, each student could copy-paste their frame of work onto the board where everyone is. One risk, however, is students pasting over other students work, cause some chaos.

If your activity could be limited to the use of sticky notes, you could explore Private Mode.

Visual Thinker | Volunteer Community Moderator

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