It is my perspective that students I worried would be marginalized (non-native English speakers, minority students, women) were able to participate more fully in the text-based, synchronous environment. I have some evidence of this, too, from surveys students filled out later in the semester.There is evidence of students applying content knowledge to the design problem, though I don't have a good sense of whether this happened more in the online environment. Importantly, though, instructors could observe and, if necessary, intervene in this application. On two occasions, I observed clear misunderstandings of course content knowledge, and I was able to address this in class. If the conversations had happened face-to-face, I wouldn't have known about the misunderstandings and therefore would not have addressed the issues.Finally, when the meetings happened simultaneously and face-to-face, I was only able to be with a single team at a particular time point. The migration to the online tool allowed me to observe all of the team's meetings, helping me to better understand team dynamics, topics I need to address in class, etc.