Our list of icebreakers for college students includes introductory games perfect for the first day of class, fun icebreakers for college students that introduce roommates, and icebreakers designed to get students comfortable working together in teams. - Filipe Carreira, President & COO, Voicebrook, See how Rhythm can solve your specific challenges, Stop Measuring Everything: The KPIs CEOs Should Prioritize, Zoom Icebreakers: 55 Pro Tips to Energize Your Virtual Meetings. Katy Mrvova March 9, 2021. Keep it simple on Zoom by playing a Scattegories-eque game without the help of an online tool. While there are new collaboration tools entering the market on a weekly basis it seems, actually facilitating a successful meeting, especially one where the goal is to put the collective brainpower of the attendees to good use, is a subject with lots of room for improvement. Returning to Work (or Hybrid Model) you might want to read Use Core Values to Strategize Your Post-COVID Return to the Office. What’s the most interesting place you’ve ever visited? For tips on how to use Zoom to its fullest potential, check out Lifelong Learning at VTS’s youtube page for a series of quick, helpful videos.. Warm-Up. 9. 16. Icebreakers typically last anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. A fun and playful icebreaker that can also be done on zoom is called “Sketch Your Neighbor.” You begin your meeting by having your team sketch each other – the person next to them on the Zoom square. Virtual icebreakers are small online team-building activities that help remote teams to connect on a personal level and enjoy some fun social time together. Assuming this wasn’t your normal way of working prior to the pandemic and the subsequent quarantines, you’ve likely found yourself on the receiving end of what seems like an endless stream of video conference call invitations. In Zoom, it’s no different as there is a “Raise hand” button available to students, but some savvy teachers have also figured out that the chat room can act as an impromptu survey as long as it involves brief responses. Visual Icebreakers: Video allows us to see people’s faces and objects on your desk or something you bring to the meeting. Use your best judgment about which icebreakers will work best for your group. Students gather in a circle, and each starts the game with 10 of something, such as marbles, coins, or game chips. Even though the game Simon Says has been around forever, kids still love it! What’s one important quality of a great boss? Though social distancing has been going on for a … Give students notice so they have time to show up to class with their items. If you haven’t had enough, here’s a list of all the resources I used for this article so you can dig for more gold   If you are looking for ways to improve your business for the new normal, check out our popular SWOT Analysis COVID 19 blog article to get started. Draw Your Alien Avatar Ice Breaker Split the group into two teams and use a Charades-idea generator (or use phrases from your study). Small Group Check-In (with a prop! Peep our top suggestions. I’ve put together a list below of icebreakers I’ve crowdsourced, participated in and used myself to help you get your distributed collaboration sessions off on the right foot. Hope that helps, Jon. If you’re using Zoom, there is a grid function that allows you to see each of the meeting’s participants in a grid. ): As the experts in effective weekly meetings, we have compiled a list of the best Zoom Icebreakers for you to increase engagement and productivity at you next team meeting. Zoom In: Find a photo that represents your spark. As you can imagine, the possibilities for these questions are endless, but if you need some help getting started, see the Icebreaker Question list below. Use Core Values to Strategize Your Post-COVID Return to the Office. While the virtual activities will be different for your team, the purpose of the icebreaker (or sometimes ice breaker) is the same—to energize and engage the team. They receive the box and pass the love to someone else. In the classroom, we use the classic “raise your hand” to gather feedback from students. This activity is well suited to both middle and high school students. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? You can choose to split your students into these separate sessions automatically or manually. If you want to keep it simple, just open your meetings by having everyone answer the same question. In apps such as Zoom, ... People need someone, and this can be one of the best professional icebreakers for people who might not want to be out and about in these types of extravert situations. Virtual background icebreaker collage. Ready to speak with a mid-market expert? Please add your own links and ideas in the comments to keep this active and growing. To assist beleaguered team leaders, below are some samples of the creative, inspiring, and effective Zoom meeting icebreakers employed by other leaders just like you. To help you keep track, ask one student to keep track of how many questions have been asked. 12+ Icebreakers to kick off your next zoom meeting, https://www.mentimeter.com/blog/audience-energizers/ready-to-use-icebreaker-templates-for-every-occasion, https://emilywebber.co.uk/quick-icebreakers-for-online-meetings-that-dont-suck/, Videokonferens - bäst program just nu - Andreas Johansson UX, https://innocentrik.com/blog/how-to-run-an-amazing-2-hour-remote-design-thinking-workshop/, Get paid what you’re worth: 2 simple tips from Pablo Picasso, OKR FAQ: Top 10 Questions about Objectives and Key Results, Selling underwear: How developers learned to love talking to customers. 12 Funny Icebreakers To Start Your Zoom Meetings, Happy Hours & Dates Off Strong 30+ Virtual Icebreakers to Energize Your Zoom Meetings. What is your #1 personal productivity tip? For a calming activity, ask students to close their eyes and think of their favorite thing to see, smell, taste, feel, and hear. Would You Like 80+ Fun Zoom Icebreakers for Virtual Teams? Icebreakers are interactive activities that offer a low stakes opportunity for instructors and students to get to know each other better. P.S. Each student can ask only one question and take one guess per turn. That means many of your meetings will be moving online to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Skype or any of the video conferencing applications available. P.S. Survey your students. Two Truths and a Lie is the most ice breaker-y of Zoom ice breaker games. What is your favorite junk food or snack. Modifications for online learning: Teacher gives the statements over Zoom or Google Meet & students record (at home) which statement is the lie. What do you want people to remember you for? What’s the most-listened-to song in your streaming playlist? When we show them that we recognize that during those important first few days of class, we begin to foster a classroom culture of respect and caring. Have participants pull up the Photos app on their phone and look at the 3rd most recent photo they took. This was a 2 hrs Design Thinking workshop, and this ice breaker was designed in a way to help participants to know their partner and get comfortable using online tools and sketching. As I was scrolling through my social media feeds this week, I noticed a trend that more tech companies are announcing a permanent move to hybrid or even a “remote-first” approach for the indefinite future. With more and more people working remotely, teams are finding virtual icebreakers can spark friendly, informal interactions online. A good icebreaker at the start of your meeting will help you set the mood, and loosen people up. It helps ground students into … There are no upcoming events at this time. Other students then ask them follow-up questions to discover which statement was a lie. Reply What’s the most interesting article you’ve read lately? Hats of celebration. There are plenty of Zoom icebreakers for students, while other virtual icebreaker activities can be facilitated asynchronously via collaboration tools in your learning management system (LMS) or in Top Hat, where you have the flexibility to do both real-time or self … Ask students to think of follow-up questions in pairs. Keep zooming out until they figure it out. What has been the best day of your life so far? When it’s your turn, pretend to hold a box or ball, explain your lovely idea, and pretend to pass the box to a person who’s next to you in the Gallery view of Zoom. I hope you found this list helpful. If we’re certain about anything in 2021, we can predict a lot of remote team meetings popping up on our calendars in upcoming months. This is a great game to get teens to laugh. This game-night classic also works well for digital groups. Digital Icebreakers are perfect for the start of the school year. Some options are more helpful for a group that’s in the early stages of forming while others are useful for building relationships in groups that have been together for a while. One tested method of increasing engagement, participation, and enjoyment of Zoom meetings is to incorporate a variety of Zoom meeting icebreakers. The possibilities are ENDLESS, thank goodness, because so are the virtual meetings. Each person can share their photo, and briefly tell the story behind it. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(116436, 'ff46b8de-38e9-44a4-a322-4594f401003c', {"region":"na1"}); Rhythm Systems has conducted hundreds of virtual strategic planning sessions, weekly meetings, annual planning and quarterly planning sessions via Zoom calls. Your students need to get to know you as well in order to build connection. Have each student grab a piece of paper and writing utensil. Best virtual icebreaker games for remote team meetings Creating a strong bond with your teammates builds better communication and trust. This icebreaker for kids is an easy way to help calm anxious students down and learn about each other. Rhythm helps fast-growing mid-market companies transform the way they work and integrate great execution into their DNA. Here are 5 creative icebreakers that can be played completely over Zoom: Virtual background icebreaker collage; Friendly Pictionary; Lightning-round show & tell; Virtual games; Breakout room "things in common" 1. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Have you ever left a one-star review online? You can change it up every day or week (based on your meeting rhythms). Below are 21 icebreakers for your small group or Bible study. In many ways it feels like we actually have *more* meetings now than we did before COVID-19 changed everything. Recent Photo Story. This is one of our favourite zoom icebreakers that works with other online virtual meeting platforms as well. https://miro.com/guides/remote-work/team-building, https://snacknation.com/blog/virtual-team-building/, https://biz30.timedoctor.com/virtual-team-building/, https://medium.com/@ExperiencePoint/six-icebreakers-to-liven-up-your-daily-zoom-meetings-f0dbed1a40ec, https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/virtual-team-building-activities-remote-teams, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ice-breaker-games, https://www.summitteambuilding.com/icebreakers-10-activities-to-energize-your-zoom-meetings/, https://blog.weekdone.com/10-not-lame-virtual-team-building-activities/, https://medium.com/future-of-design-in-higher-education/zoom-friendly-warmups-and-icebreakers-3400c8b7263, https://teambuilding.com/blog/virtual-icebreaker-questions, 5 Best Practices to Manage Remote Employees, How to Use Daily Huddles to Stay Aligned with Remote Teams, 5 Steps to Having a Productive Virtual Monthly Meeting, The Anatomy of a Great Quarterly Plan (Infographic), Rhythm Systems Quarterly Planning Resource Center. The goal: Get rid of all your chips as soon as you can. Copyright 2021 Jeff Gothelf, all rights reserved. Simon Says. 3. Zoom-Friendly Warmups and Icebreakers. One of the critical pieces of getting a team in the right frame of mind and comfortable with the tools available to them is kicking off the meeting with a proper icebreaker technique. If you are finding that your team meetings are getting stale and the team is checking out, it might be time to change up your meeting and bring in a Zoom icebreaker—and I’m not talking about the kind of icebreaker my 5-year-old does with her kindergarten class on Zoom (although, if you want to see what the kids are up to these days, check out Go Noodle). At our last Youth Worker Virtual Gathering, we talked about ways to make virtual gatherings with young people a little more fun and engaging.Here are some ideas that we came up with! Answers discussed online over Zoom or Google Meet. Some of these meetings are designed to be collaboration sessions. What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had? Good online icebreakers can even strengthen team bonding amongst students for the duration of the semester and beyond. That means (you guessed it) all of those Zoom meetings and working remotely are here to stay, too! —  It’s worth mentioning something @wootube added in his response to my crowdsource request on Twitter: “I think perhaps we should respect that some people don’t really want their ice broken I’m concerned that agility is making software development an extroverts-only game.” Given how many of these meetings, workshops and conferences we’re all attending at the moment it’s best to try and read a room before kicking off yet another one of the icebreaker games to avoid any fatigue and to respect the introverts in the room. There have been many articles written on the topic, so I’ve scoured the internet to bring you the best ideas I could find, categorized by the purpose of the activity. You can also have students take a photo of something from a weird angle or extreme close up and have the class guess the object. Make sure you also participate in these activities whether they are in-person or virtual icebreakers. 4. Have everyone think of something wonderful to share with someone else on the team. Engaging with students in a personal way shouldn’t be limited to the first week of school. Find out how we help high growth companies execute their growth strategies and win! Don’t let students blurt out the answer—they must wait until it’s their turn. Students write down three sentences with information about themselves, however, one must be a lie. You can see a portrait from one of the workshops and ‘how to run a 2 hrs Design Thinking workshop’ here https://innocentrik.com/blog/how-to-run-an-amazing-2-hour-remote-design-thinking-workshop/ so that anyone can run it. If you like this list of fun zoom icebreakers, start a 7-Day Free Trial to get access to our entire activity database which presently features more than 80 ice-breakers, energisers, group games and teambuilding activities that are suitable for zoom and other virtual settings. 1. Start by printing off your chosen icebreaker questions on cards and putting them all into a hat or box. You are sure to find the perfect icebreaker for any campus need or event. As companies look to 2021 and make their make budgeting and resourcing decisions, it’s not a mystery why many are choosing to reduce investment in physical spaces and double down on the remote work infrastructure if their business model allows it. 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