From Classroom to Career: Use of Digital Collaboration Tools to Bridge Theory & Practice

Teamwork and project management skills, from in-person to remote interactions, remain central to marketing graduates’ career readiness, yet students often complete team projects with limited guidance on how to organize work, especially in hybrid and technology‑mediated environments. This study explores a pilot of integrating Miro, a widely used digital collaboration whiteboard, into classroom student projects. A pre- and post-survey design was implemented across two undergraduate marketing courses at a large Midwestern U.S. university to explore if Miro can improve students’ team‑project experience and perceived preparedness for working with emerging technologies. Students completed a questionnaire at the beginning of the semester and again after using Miro to coordinate a semester‑long team project. Paired‑sample tests indicate that students reported a higher overall team‑project experience after using Miro and significantly greater perceived preparedness to enter a workplace shaped by AI and emerging technologies. Building on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) adoption concepts, such as perceived usefulness and ease of use, the paper offers implementation guidance and a faculty toolkit for structuring team projects with visual workflows that support transparency, accountability, and iterative feedback. Implications are discussed for marketing educators seeking to bridge classroom teamwork with contemporary workplace collaboration practices.