4 Types of Arrival Activities

Arrival activities fall into several broad categories: icebreakers, community builders, energizers, content-based activities, and gaming. They can be blended in order to bolster engagement, foster community, and build investment in the class. Arrival activities are purposefully low effort “asks” designed to orient learners to the learning environment. The wide range of possible arrival activities gives instructors the ability to choose those that would best fit their class and benefit their students. However, all arrival activities serve a common purpose: a ‘starting point’ to immediately capture the attention and engagement of students, to connect students to the course material (and to each other), and to set the stage for the class to follow.

Icebreakers are a type of arrival activity that have been “designed to help students begin to feel comfortable with each other… characterized by brevity, relatively low-risk involvement, and participation” from all members of the class.^[1] These activities encourage connections between students who may not have known each other before the course. They also help to create a sense of comfort with the class itself, and with the concept of experiential learning. Icebreaker questions could be related to the course content (e.g., “which course topic looks most interesting to you and why?”), help inform your teaching (e.g., “what question(s) do you have about the course outline?”), or help learners to get better acquainted, build community, and have fun (e.g., “share one boring fact about yourself”).

“I met one of my best friends through an icebreaker in third year university. Without the icebreaker, we may have never begun talking” Former BSc student.

Community builders are arrival activities that are “designed to help students to develop a sense of connection and shared focus in a designated group. They are characterized by an emphasis on one or more group variables: e.g., roles, norms, purposes, processes, leadership, or dynamics.”^[2] Typically, a group builder activity will take up more class time than an icebreaker, and will require more intentional facilitating on the part of the course instructor.

Energizers (or “Re-energizers”) are a type of arrival activity that are “designed to help students to ‘clear their minds’, to re-create personal and group energy, or for transition purposes.”^[3] They are typically quick, rely on participant involvement, and are known for their sense of ‘fun’. These ‘fun’ activities have a positive impact on students’ participation, motivation, and enthusiasm for the course. An example might be setting time aside at the start of class for groups to create a team charter ahead of a group project, which would help provide a roadmap for their work – setting meeting times, contact methods, preferred collaborative technologies, roles/tasks and project timelines. These could all be part of one group builder activity or scaffolded over a few classes.

Course Content-Based Arrival Activities are an opportunity to reinforce core themes and course sticking points, often through active learning.^[4] For example, “entry ticket” activities invite students to individually respond to a low-effort, content-based question at the beginning of class^[5]; “brainwriting” tasks allow students to generate ideas in response to a prompt provided to them as they enter the room for later discussion^[6]; and “one-minute papers” ask students to write for one minute about what they have learned in the course or what they are having trouble with thus far.^[7] Content-based arrival activities can also connect course content and themes to popular culture and contemporary news items. For example, students may be asked to upload live reactions to a piece of media played at the beginning of the class, or to write a short low-stakes reflection on the piece.^[8]

Games and Internet-based activities don’t necessarily have to be content-based, but they should be engaging and low-stakes for students.^[9] Some examples include trivia or Jeopardy-style games, and content-based games. Games may be pre-existing or instructor-created, and can function as a tool that gives students “a novel way to interact with games in order to learn skills and knowledge”; they also support social-emotional development, an important factor in learning.^[10] In addition to games, internet-based activities (for example, an Internet scavenger hunt related to course material) and social media (such as Facebook or Twitter) may be used in arrival activities.^[11] Social media arrival activities could include group forum discussions, or creating and sharing posts (content-based or open-ended) to a specific hashtag.^[12][13] However, course designers should bear in mind when planning activities that open-ended sharing can have the risk of leading to hurtful or inappropriate content being posted.