Icebreakers are an excellent way to promote student interactions and to develop personal connections early in the semester, which is particularly important in blended and online courses. This guide provides ideas for icebreakers that you could implement using a Discussion Board

Tip: Enable post ratings to encourage peer-to-peer interactions.

Alternatively, you could consider implementing icebreakers using PadletUQ (not available in China). Refer to the Icebreaker with PadletUQ.

Tip: Have your teaching staff contribute to the icebreaker first to encourage student engagement.

Dream holiday destination

Students post their dream holiday destination, whether it be a country, state, city or landmark, and explain why they want to travel there. Optionally, students could also include an image. Students could be asked to give 5 star ratings to holiday destinations posted by other students that they would also like to travel to.

Create a forum (or use the default Main forum) and check Allow Member to Rate Posts.  Add a thread with instructions for students to respond to.

icebreakers examples

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Favourite study space

Students describe and optionally include a photo of their favourite study space. Students could be asked to give 5 star ratings to study spaces posted by other students that they relate to.

Create a forum (or use the default Main forum) and check Allow Member to Rate Posts.  Add a thread with instructions for students to respond to.

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Two truths and a lie

Students post two truths and a lie about themselves and then comment on other student posts to guess which is the lie. Students could be asked to respond to two of their peers' posts.

Create a forum (or use the default Main forum) and add a thread with instructions for students to respond to.

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Let's write a story

Provide students with the first sentence of a narrative to set the scene, with the idea that each student replies with at least one subsequent sentence to eventually co-create a narrative. 

Create a forum (or use the default Main forum) and add a thread with instructions for students to respond to.

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Things we have in common

Set up a forum with separate questions in each thread. Students respond to the questions to build a shared understanding of the cohort. Optionally students could also include an image.

Example questions include:

  • What degree are you studying?
  • What smartphone model do you own?
  • Which city were you born in?
  • What is your favourite hobby?

Create a forum (or use the default Main forum) and add a thread with instructions for students to respond to.

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Example icebreaker topics for discipline areas

Create a forum (or use the default Main forum) and add a thread with instructions for students to respond to.

Example discipline areas

Week 1
Personal to minimise concerns about a right or wrong answer

Week 2
Sharing a personal experience related to discipline area

Week 3
An evaluative judgement based on personal experience

Tourism

Name your dream holiday destination.

Name a great holiday service experience.

What was it about the service that made your favourite holiday service experience so good?

Public Relations

What are your weekend plans?

What's your favourite food?

Name a company you trust.

Remember a time a company faced a crisis in the media. Was is handled well or poorly?

Journalism

Where in the world would you most like to work?

Which source of news do you trust the most?

Think of a news story that impressed you. What made it so good?

Languages

In which part of [Japan] would you most like to live?

Which is your favourite [Japanese] book/movie?

In your opinion, which aspect of [Japanese] is the most challenging?

Research methods (postgrad)

What do you hope to get from this course?

Which field of research interests you the most?

Share a [theory/paper/book] that you've recently read. What was the best aspect of the work?

Linguistics

If you could invite two authors to a dinner party, who would they be?

What most interests you about the field of linguistics?

How would you like to apply the theories we're learning in the course?

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