Forming teams, developing relationships, and building trust can be challenging when dealing with increasingly socially anxious, disconnected, and diverse student cohorts. We describe an icebreaker that, through low-risk classroom interactions, allows students to socially identify with an in-group and compete with out-groups in a classroom environment. The activities provide abundant opportunities to relate in-class experiences to Social Identity Theory and other relevant management and OB theories.
Morrison et al. (Fri,) studied this question.