Normally, there will be more than one participant, but in this case we have one, Doug, who has selected a green check button on his toolbar to vote in favor of the statement. Had he disagreed, he would have selected the red button. This is a quick way to identify the degree of consensus in a group. The toolbar on top of the screen contains several icons, including ones for polling the participants, a chat box for typed comments and responses, the sharing of a Web site and a whiteboard. The chat box is used for making a comment or asking a question, as shown in exhibit 3 .
Online chats can occur at any time during the meeting.
If I wish to precisely capture participants' comments, I can request that specific feedback be typed into the chat box. If the facilitator or the participants want to combine text and hand sketches, Centra provides a whiteboard feature. Under that, I added my own text and another sketch. All the participants view the postings simultaneously. In addition, Centra allows me to bring up a Web page and display it on the screen.