Icebreaker by Elvie, reuploaded at 6:50, Nov. 6

1. Online Icebreaker:
Promoting Student/Teacher
Interaction
The Online Mood Builder
by Elvie

2. Goal
To encourage and promote online
class interaction by engaging on
fun and ‘getting-to- know-youbetter’ online activities.

3. Justification:
• Need to be more creative due to
 The need to know each other better, i.e., studentteacher and student-student relationships.
 minimize miscommunication due to lack of face-toface interaction.
 Have participants warmed up, eager and ready to
learn.
• Thus, it is important to have more in and out of class
student-mentor/facilitator contact to promote student
engagement or involvement and sustain motivation and
interest of students in doing online work.

4. Other Reasons:
• Although our student-netizens are internet savvy, they are
still concerned and uneasy about this new way of learning
and would be grateful for a supportive mentor who can
create a good atmosphere for online learning and
participation by:
a) helping participants integrate into a group;
b) helping them feel comfortable working together through
good listening, developing online social skills, building
rapport with mentors and breaking out cliques.
c) in short, promoting cooperation and sense of
online class “teamship” notwithstanding the lack of
face-to-face interaction.

5. In Summary:
• Icebreakers, indeed, can play an important role in
helping online participants integrate and connect
with one another and thus promote collaborative
learning.
• Further, icebreakers can enhance your teaching by
helping to stimulate class cooperation and
participation whether online or face-to-face class
interactions.
• Thus, mentor needs to ‘reach out’ and have a
frequent dialogue or discussions with students.

6. Some Terminologies to remember:
• Online Icebreaker – a strategy to breakdown the online
walls and get to know one another despite lack of face-toface interaction.
FYI: The term "icebreaker" comes from the saying "break
the ice", which in turn comes from special ships called
"icebreakers" that are designed to break up ice in arctic
regions. And just as these ships make it easier for other
ships to travel, an icebreaker helps to clear the way for
learning to occur by making the learners more comfortable
and encouraging conversation.

7. How to engage students?
• Online icebreaker should be short,
simple and appropriate for a wide
age range.
• Aside from the brief bio or CV of the
mentor and of the online
participants, here are some of my
favorite online activities from
eCollege.com:

8. How to engage students?
• Misscomm-puter-unication (Crystal Thomas).
Ask the class to share their most embarrassing
mishap using a computer. For example, replying
to the wrong person in an email. The mentor
should be the first to share his/her own
‘shocking’ cyber experience.
• Good things come in Threes (Carol Bates).
Example: ask each student to list his/her 3
favorite websites, 3 favorite activities and 3
favorite people.

9. How to engage students?
• Memory Lane (Sarah Odom). To ‘breakdown’ the
differences in age, ethnicity, other things and to
close or expose the generation gaps that might
exist, ask students to list three (3) major world
events that happened in the year in which they
were born. Then have the other members guess
the year and post a short response on whether they
remembered the events r had never heard of them
at all.

10. How to engage students?
• 2 lies and a Truth (by Suhana Chikatla). Each
student is asked to list 3 interesting things about
him/her self. Two must be lies and one must be
true. Other students vote to determine which
interesting thing is a lie. The student with the most
incorrect votes wins.
• For more online icebreaker activities, please refer
to the sources cited.

11. My class icebreakers:

12. For my own Tax101 class this semester (and since this is a very
‘hot’ and relevant topic to all taxpayers now), I shall have….
the ‘PDAF challenge’.
Image from philSTAR.com
Given the chance to receive P1 billion PDAF, each student would be asked to list 3
‘projects’ where to spend the money for. There is no right or wrong answer so
students should not be afraid of any legal sanction.

13. Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow.
A rainbow appears, and given the chance to find that pot of gold to
fulfill a one-of-a-lifetime dream, what is that dream you would
want fulfilled?

14. Icebreaker Exercise:
• Having enjoyed the different
icebreakers you had and given
examples and cited resources,
construct a one-page
icebreaker for your own class.
Upload this in the separate DF
on the Icebreaker Exercise.
TYVM. 

15. Resources:
www.usaonline.southalabama.edu
http://www.learningcircuits.com/2001/jul2001/geek.html at ASTD's Online
Magazine All About E-learning.
http://webconferenceguru.com/2012/05/01/icebreakers-for-the-live-virtualclassroom/
http://www.google.com.ph/imgres?um=1&sa=N&biw=837&bih=391&hl=en
&tbm=isch&tbnid=11CkLf5r3yhTPM:&imgrefurl=http://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PDAF
http://insight.typepad.co.uk/40_icebreakers_for_small_groups.pdf
http://www.ldrc.ca/projects/miinventory/miinventory.php#form
http://www.google.com.ph/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=837&bih=391&tbm=isc
h&tbnid=b6x-BrL4-5NZwM:&imgrefurl=http://www.adherecreative.com/
http://www.onegentleman.biz/news/news-images/EcoTech-Cartoon-sized.jpg