Showcasing Learning Design Strategies: Designing Virtual Learning That Is Engaging and Collaborative

Every fortnight, our team runs an internal showcase to examine how learning design decisions play out in real delivery contexts. This edition focused on one of the hardest problems in learning design: how to make virtual training engaging, collaborative, and genuinely valuable.

The showcase explored how a deliberately designed online collaboration space can transform virtual learning from a passive experience into one that supports thinking, participation, and shared insight.

The Focus: Making Virtual Learning Work

This showcase focused on the design of an online learning experience delivered through a shared Miro board. Rather than attempting to replicate a face-to-face workshop online, the intent was to design for the realities of virtual learning.

Virtual training is harder. Attention is more fragile. Interaction requires more prompting. Collaboration does not happen by default. Without careful design, online sessions can quickly become content heavy, facilitator led, or quietly disengaging.

As discussed in the session, the activities were rebuilt as structured frames 

“with the intention that we will keep the same level of content.” 

The challenge was not simplifying the learning, but redesigning how learners engage with it in a virtual environment.

The board was also designed to feel intentionally different to in-person delivery. 

As noted in the showcase, it was created as: 

“something slightly different to the face-to-face workshops so that people can come out of the workshops and realise that they had different experiences.” 

This allowed the virtual format to add value rather than feel like a compromise.

The Design Challenge: Making Virtual Training Engaging and Collaborative

The core design challenge was how to make virtual training feel active rather than passive.

In online environments, learners can easily become observers. If navigation is unclear, interaction feels awkward, or collaboration lacks structure, energy drains quickly. Group work can feel noisy or superficial, and discussion struggles to form.

The design response needed to reduce friction, make participation obvious, and create shared points of focus that would prompt thinking and conversation. This challenge shaped every design decision that followed.

Design Strategy 1: Using Visual Structure, Wayfinding, and Branding to Support Thinking Online

The first major strategy focused on how learners orient themselves and think within the board.

Way finding and visual layout were designed together as a single system. Topics are aligned vertically, with each vertical column representing a core topic area. This gives learners an immediate sense of what the session is focused on and how ideas are grouped.

Within each topic, activities and subtopics are arranged horizontally. This horizontal flow shows progression through the learning, making it clear how ideas build across the session. Learners can see where an activity begins, how it develops, and when it is complete.

Activities sit within consistent frames, with repeated headings, layouts, and visual cues. These patterns reduce the need for explanation and lower cognitive load, which is critical in virtual settings.

Branding consistency reinforces this structure. Colour palettes, iconography, and visual styling remain consistent across the board. This cohesion helps learners feel oriented and confident as they move between activities. Rather than reading as a collection of separate exercises, the board feels like a single learning environment.

A playful but purposeful wayfinding element supports transitions between activities. The “Mouse Parking Lot” gives learners a clear place to move their cursor once they have finished a task. While light-hearted in appearance, it serves a serious function. It signals completion without verbal instruction, prevents accidental edits to shared work, and gives facilitators a quick visual cue about readiness.

To further reduce friction and build energy among participants, the experience also included a short warm-up activity designed as a friendly competition. Participants were challenged to complete a series of quick tasks using core Miro tools, such as adding sticky notes, navigating frames, and interacting with shared elements.

Together, these choices ensure the board feels “very well organised” and “not overwhelming at all,” even with a large amount of content.

Design Strategy 2: Designing Participation That Makes Collaboration Visible

The second strategy focused on participation and collaboration, which does not happen naturally in virtual environments.

To support this, the experience opened with a short warm-up exercise designed as a friendly competition. Participants were challenged to complete a series of quick tasks using core Miro tools, such as adding sticky notes, navigating frames, and interacting with shared elements. This allowed learners to practise visible participation early, reducing hesitation and helping collaboration feel more natural once the main activities began.

Activities were designed to mirror familiar face-to-face behaviours. As noted in the showcase, 

“these activities are quite similar to how the learners will engage in a face-to-face session.” 

Learners add ideas using digital sticky notes and organise them into shared categories.

Each activity carries a clear intention around whether learners work individually or collectively. Learners often have their own space to contribute, while still being able to see what others have written. This balances autonomy with visibility.

The result is a shared visual field. Learners can see a “collective view of lots of different people’s ideas in one space,”which allows discussion to move beyond individual responses. As ideas accumulate, “you start to see trends and patterns emerging,” which can be “really powerful” for learning.

In a virtual setting, this visibility replaces the subtle cues learners would normally pick up in a physical room. It gives discussion something concrete to form around and helps collaboration feel purposeful rather than performative.

Design Strategy 3: Using Miro AI to Accelerate Sense-Making and Discussion

The use of AI in this board was designed very deliberately. Rather than positioning AI as a shortcut or answer generator, it was used to accelerate sense-making within a well-defined learning frame.

The starting point is always a clear learning model. In this example, learners work within an empathy canvas that breaks customer understanding into functional, emotional, and social needs, alongside pains and gains. This structure gives the task shape and intent before AI is introduced.

A real-world input is then added, such as a business website. This provides context, language, and constraints, grounding the activity in something tangible rather than abstract.

Miro AI is used to analyse that input against the existing canvas structure. The AI works within the model rather than around it, generating content that maps directly to the categories learners are already using. The output is not a final answer. It is a first pass.

Crucially, that output appears directly on the board, alongside learner contributions. Learners review it, question it, and decide whether it reflects reality. As described in the showcase, they

 “have a read, and think about whether they are accurate or not.”

This creates a strong discussion dynamic. Instead of starting from a blank canvas, learners have a shared artefact to respond to. The AI output becomes something to critique, refine, and improve, rather than something to accept.

The benefit in a virtual setting is momentum. As noted in the showcase, this approach 

“lets people get to the content they need without having to use all that time going through the process ... when they really just need the output.” 

Time and energy are spent on judgement and discussion, which is where the learning value sits.

In this way, AI supports learning without replacing thinking. It acts as a catalyst that helps virtual discussions start faster and go deeper.

The Team Reflection: When Virtual Design Is Done Well

Team reflections highlighted how these strategies came together. Several responses focused on positive surprise, with one noting, “that was not what I was expecting.”

There was also confidence in how the work would land with clients. As shared during the showcase, 

“I think the client will be very impressed,”

 alongside feedback that 

“it looks fabulous.” 

Particular recognition was given to the clarity of the board and the strength of the wayfinding.

These reflections reinforce that when virtual learning is intentionally designed, its quality is both visible and felt.

Closing Insight: Designing Virtual Learning That People Want to Engage With

This showcase reinforced that engaging virtual learning does not happen by accident. It requires deliberate design decisions that reduce friction, support participation, and create shared moments of thinking and discussion.

By combining clear visual structure, purposeful collaboration, and thoughtful use of AI, the team created a virtual learning environment that feels engaging, collaborative, and meaningful. The result is an online experience that works with the realities of virtual delivery, rather than fighting against them.

Partner With Us on Your Next Virtual Learning Design

Our team designs virtual learning experiences that support real thinking and collaboration. We focus on creating digital environments that make participation easier, discussion richer, and learning more engaging, even when people are not in the same room. 

If you are designing virtual training and want it to genuinely work, we would love to talk.