Remote Ice Breaker: a tool for creativity and group cohesion 

With the widespread use of telecommuting and distance learning, more and more meetings and workshops are being held online. In this context, successfully creating a participatory climate within a group of participants is a difficult exercise.

Wooclap responds to this difficulty by proposing an ice breaker functionality to its 100% digital offer. Discover the specificities of this fun activity to animate and energize each team meeting or remote work workshop.

Why offer a remote ice breaker activity?

The ice breaker: a remote and 100% online communication tool

Digital technology has gradually taken over the field of education and training, giving way to a new way of delivering information:

• workshop and remote meeting;
• training and online courses;
• 100% digital videoconferencing.

In this context of massive digitalization, finding one's place in a group of participants that one knows only through a screen is not an easy task. The ice breaker activity is the ideal solution to break down the barriers between team members in just a few minutes.

What is the purpose of the remote ice breaker?

The main objective of the remote ice breaker is to create a group dynamic despite the constraint of the screen. Social connections within a team are less easy to establish during an online training or course, unlike a workshop or face-to-face session. 

The remote icebreaker must allow to break the ice instantly so that each person can take advantage of this collaborative work tool. Given at the very beginning of a team meeting in a company or as an introduction to a theoretical course, the ice breaker will help all the participants to reach a better cohesion to make germinate ideas in turn. 

How to prepare an effective remote ice breaker?

Select an icebreaker that is appropriate for the participants

Adaptability to the group of participants on the part of the facilitator is essential. It is necessary to take into account the specificities of each person, his or her skills and limitations so as not to produce the opposite effect of the one expected. A remote ice breaker that is too complex or has no real connection to the participants' area of expertise would be a failure. In this sense, prepare a simple and fun activity such as a knowledge quiz in order to reach your goal without any mistakes.

Choose an ice breaker with a relevant duration

The ice breaker should not take over the meeting, the course or the training itself. This exercise must take place at the beginning of the session and must not exceed half the duration of the main event. For example, for a 2-hour training workshop, schedule a remote ice breaker for no more than 20 to 30 minutes.

Select one or two activities to animate your remote ice breaker 

The remote ice breaker can take various forms thus bringing a variety as well in the exercises proposed by the animator as in the possibilities of interaction of the participants:

• brainstorming to detect a trend among the teams;
• the open question to break the ice in a few words;
• the survey to measure mood and general state of mind;
• find on the image to increase the participation of the different members while having fun. 

To avoid losing your audience, select a maximum of two ice breaker activities.

The Wooclap icebreaker for your professional remote events

Get inspiration from our icebreaker designs

Your remote presentation meeting is coming up and you are hesitating between several ice breaker exercises? Wooclap has the solution and has listed 25 relevant and particularly effective ice breaker ideas to make your trainings, work sessions or workshops more interactive and fun. MCQs, open-ended questions, surveys or brainstorming: import the examples into your online space and start your icebreaker session!

Ice breaker: a tool integrated with teaching software

The advantage of the Wooclap solution lies in its ease of integration with corporate or educational tools and software . If you want to set up a videoconference and share your screen with your participants, Wooclap integrates in one click with all your tools in a single window:  Zoom, Skype for Business, BigBlueButton, or Jitsi. Do you have a shared workspace like Teams? Download the Wooclap application and start your ice breaker activity integrated in your work environment. 

Finally, aware of the difficulties that can present a remote teaching or training, Wooclap has developed a feature particularly appreciated by users: At the pace of the participants. This way, students, teams and collaborators can attend the presentation asynchronously whenever and wherever they want!