Jessie Lyu and Benjamin Wang
Jessie and Benjamin are second-year BA Education Studies students who have taken a placement with the Generation UCL project as part of the Education Studies Placement Module.
As part of our placement, we were tasked with developing a new icebreaker game. An icebreaker is a game or exercise designed to warm-up conversations among participants in a meeting, training class, team building event, or other activity. Icebreakers are especially useful when people do not know one another. Lecturers may employ icebreakers in their classrooms to help their students feel connected and comfortable while studying. We know from our own observations that it is regularly the case that university students are also bashful in communicating with each other and need some external forces to move their relationships forward.
Our model was the ‘Object icebreaker’ created in 2021 by some UCL Arts and Sciences BASc students as part of a UCL Arena ChangeMakers project and using photographs of different objects from UCL Culture Collections. The development of an icebreaker game necessitates the consideration of several aspects such as the age of the participants, any hierarchical distinction among the participants, the venue's characteristics, and the equipment. Firstly, we decided to target UCL undergraduates, or more significantly, first and second-year students on the BA Education studies. Secondly, we followed the BASc students’ model of selecting different objects and images from the collections. Finally, we found Mentimeter to be an excellent platform to insert our activities and receive students' responses to the questions.
The Mentimeter screenshot above demonstrates our design - participants are shown four different objects related to UCL collections, followed by a series of questions to identify a common theme that links them together. In the process, participants are encouraged to discuss which object they feel most connected to and then share their personal experiences with each other. Through engagement and discussion, we expect participants to get to know each other and learn more about objects in UCL museums.
The first time we tried the icebreaking activity at a coffee chat held by the Education Society. On that day, around 20 students and staff from IOE were gathering at the Drama Studio. However, most students seemed to know each other already; they grabbed some food and began chatting once they arrived. Thus, it somehow failed to play an actual icebreaker role. But interestingly, in the completed questionnaire, nearly two-thirds of students chose ‘Agree’ towards the statement ‘I feel more connected with my partners after this activity’. Hence, this illustrates that the icebreaking activity can also play an active role even among acquaintances. However, the icebreaker was accomplished much earlier than we estimated, which might be attributed to the apparent common theme: Jeremy Bentham, a spiritual leader that has deeply rooted in every UCLer's mind. The answer was too easy!
We therefore redesigned our icebreaking activity with new objects and made the common theme more open to discussion, ranging from a particular person to past student life (Figure 3). The second time we organised this activity at a seminar for first-year students. However, we felt very nervous about presenting as two green hands. Unlike operating the Mentimeter on our own devices, we faced technical problems when we tried to log in on another computer. It took a long time, so we did not know if people were losing patience. Indeed, this was something that we did not consider during the preparation. Another difficulty was that more than half of the students were far from the presenters in a large classroom. Hence, they were less likely to concentrate on the activity and participate. When nobody responded after asking a question, we had to say something to break the silence. It is a challenge to our contingency ability.
In summary, by designing this icebreaking activity we were surprised to find that there is an enormous amount of valuable history to be discovered. A building, a sculpture, or even a piece of yellowed paper carries so much about the college’s history. Meanwhile, as UCL students, our lives are tightly related to them. Moreover, we practised teaching skills during the presentation from a professional perspective. It was constructive for us, as students who may become teachers in the future.