Surabaya — A structured visual learning environment using Canva Whiteboard has shown positive results in improving university students’ collaboration skills in a Multimedia Development course. The finding comes from research by Ima Pinensi Br Tarigan, Mustaji, Utari Dewi, and Almaida Vebibina. The study was conducted from February to March 2026 and involved 56 sixth-semester students in the Educational Technology Study Program at Universitas Palangka Raya. After participating in six learning sessions, the students’ average collaboration score increased from 62.64 to 86.88.
Collaboration has become an increasingly important skill in higher education because academic and professional activities require individuals to divide responsibilities, exchange ideas, negotiate decisions, and produce shared outcomes. In multimedia development, these abilities are particularly important because creating a multimedia product requires more than technical skills. Students must analyze learning needs, organize content, develop visual designs, create navigation structures, build prototypes, and evaluate the final product through coordinated teamwork.
However, working in groups does not automatically result in balanced collaboration. The study identified several problems experienced by students during previous digital group assignments. Work distribution was often unequal, with a small number of students completing most of the substantive work. Individual responsibilities were not always clearly visible, while students also experienced difficulties providing constructive feedback and resolving differences over visual and technical decisions.
Similar conditions were identified during the preliminary analysis at the Educational Technology Study Program of Universitas Palangka Raya. More than 78 percent of students from the previous cohort were categorized as having moderate collaboration skills. The lecturer also experienced difficulties monitoring individual contributions because previous assignments focused more heavily on final products than on the process of generating ideas, distributing responsibilities, resolving disagreements, and revising work.
These conditions encouraged the researchers to develop a Collaborative Virtual Workspace based on Canva Whiteboard. The platform was not simply used as a digital whiteboard but was organized into a structured visual learning environment with specific stages and functions. The workspace included areas for needs analysis, concept mapping, storyboarding, visual-asset organization, prototype development, peer feedback, product presentation, and collaboration reflection.
According to the researchers, the educational value of the approach did not come solely from using Canva Whiteboard. Its value emerged from the way features such as comments, sticky notes, templates, visual zones, and shared editing were organized around specific learning objectives. Through this structure, students could identify project stages, understand the tasks that needed to be completed, provide feedback to group members, and document product revisions.
The researchers used a design and development research approach based on the ADDIE model, consisting of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. The main participants were 56 sixth-semester students enrolled in a Multimedia Development course. They were divided into nine groups, with approximately six students in each group. The intervention lasted six meetings, with each meeting lasting 150 minutes. The learning activities combined face-to-face collaboration in class with asynchronous group work outside scheduled class hours.
Each meeting followed a connected learning sequence. During the first meeting, students explored instructional media and created a mind map of examples of media used in schools and related problems. The second meeting focused on analyzing learners, subject matter, learning barriers, and the context in which the media would be used. Students then developed navigation flows and storyboards, organized visual assets, created prototypes, provided feedback to other groups, revised their products, and finally presented their completed multimedia products.
The development process also included evaluation before full implementation. The content expert gave the product a validity score of 90 percent, while the design expert gave a score of 94 percent. Both results were categorized as highly valid. The researchers revised the product based on expert recommendations, including simplifying explanations of design procedures, adding a glossary, improving visual contrast, and increasing the distance between group work areas.
The small-group trial produced an overall practicality score of 85 percent. Collaborative-feature functionality received a score of 91.11 percent, while visual readability and instructional clarity reached 82.22 percent. Feedback from students was used to improve navigation, simultaneous editing procedures, and access to visual assets. After these revisions, field practicality increased to 91 percent.
The improvement in collaboration skills was particularly notable. Students’ average collaboration score increased by 24.23 points, from 62.64 in the pretest to 86.88 in the posttest. All 56 students obtained higher posttest scores than their pretest scores. Statistical analysis showed that the difference was significant, with t(55) = 41.99 and p < 0.001. The normalized gain of 0.649 indicated a moderate level of improvement.
The improvement was associated with learning activities that directly trained different aspects of collaboration. Students contributed to needs analysis, storyboard development, visual-asset production, and prototype development. Communication took place through comments, sticky notes, and discussions. When selecting content, visual styles, or design alternatives, students also had to negotiate and resolve differences of opinion. Peer-review activities encouraged students to provide constructive criticism and respect the decisions made by other groups.
The shared workspace also made the collaborative process more visible. Comments, visual elements, and revision records provided evidence of project development that may not be visible in conventional group assignments. Lecturers could monitor group progress, comments, and revisions within the same shared workspace. However, the researchers emphasized that the number of digital activities does not automatically represent the quality of an individual’s contribution. Assessment should therefore combine self-assessment, peer assessment, observation, and product quality.
For higher education, the findings suggest that digital whiteboards can provide greater educational value when they are incorporated into a structured learning design. Lecturers should not simply provide a digital workspace and ask students to work in groups. Learning stages, editing rules, activity targets, visual navigation, feedback, and revision processes need to be clearly designed so that technology can effectively support collaboration.
The study also has important limitations. The research used a one-group pretest-posttest design without a comparison group, while much of the effectiveness measurement relied on students’ self-assessment. Therefore, the results cannot establish that Canva Whiteboard alone caused the improvement. Factors such as lecturer support, testing effects, project experience, and familiarity with the platform may also have contributed to the results. The researchers therefore describe the findings as preliminary evidence that should be confirmed through stronger experimental or mixed-method research designs.
Overall, the research by Ima Pinensi Br Tarigan, Mustaji, Utari Dewi, and Almaida Vebibina shows that the Canva Whiteboard-based Collaborative Virtual Workspace achieved high validity and practicality and was associated with improved students’ collaboration skills. The learning environment combined shared work, visual activities, peer feedback, revision, and reflection within a single learning sequence. The approach provides higher education institutions with an alternative for developing multimedia learning that focuses not only on the final product but also on the collaborative process behind it.
Author Profiles
Ima Pinensi Br Tarigan — Doctoral Program in Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, State University of Surabaya.
Mustaji — Doctoral Program in Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, State University of Surabaya.
Utari Dewi — Doctoral Program in Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, State University of Surabaya.
Almaida Vebibina — Department of Educational Technology, Faculty of Education, State University of Medan.
Research Source
Article Title: Developing a Collaborative Virtual Workspace-Based Visual Learning Environment to Enhance University Students’ Collaboration Skills in a Multimedia Development Course
Journal: East Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (EAJMR), Vol. 5 No. 8, 2026, pp. 3457–3474.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55927/eajmr.v5i8.273
Journal Website: https://journaleajmr.my.id/index.php/eajmr
0 Komentar