Team Trivia as an Orientation Activity: Fordham University Case Study
This past week, we had the honor of working once again with Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) to create a fun & engaging orientation activity for their incoming class. What makes a school orientation event unique is that unlike using trivia for team building or corporate party entertainment, where attendees typically know one another well, incoming students are almost always complete strangers, who generally have no prior relationship with the institution or with other students. This presents not only an interesting challenge, but a wonderful opportunity to foster group bonding among a cohort who will be studying, socializing, and basically spending an awful lot of time together over the coming semesters and years.
Where to begin when no one knows anybody? We started out by getting a precise understanding of who the incoming class was, all 250+ of them: age, demographics, male/female ratio, countries of origin, and a host of other characteristics. Working closely with the dean’s office, we then made sure to time the event so that it occurred after a full day of more “formal” orientation activities- remarks by the dean and senior faculty members, administrative announcements & policies, scheduling and other new student essentials. This way, the group was certain to have something fun to look forward to.
The venue was a large bar/restaurant with multiple private spaces secured in advance for our use, located within easy walking distance from Fordham’s campus. Upon arrival, after grabbing drinks and socializing a bit, the entire group was broken into self-selected teams, with the dean’s office staff ensuring that nobody was left out, and that the teams were well-balanced. Our host then read out rounds of trivia questions which had been carefully customized in advance, to take into account the fact that almost half of the attendees were international students, and virtually none were New Yorkers. With questions challenging their knowledge of global pop culture, geography, history, science, business and corporate CEO’s, a group of strangers were suddenly wrapped in an enthusiastically competitive, high-energy game, complete with cheers of school pride, thunderous screams of delight on right answers given, and of course, plenty of trash talking as well.
By the time the event had finished, the entire group was in a socializing frenzy, buying each other drinks and talking excitedly about both our trivia event, as well as the school experience to come. We were so thrilled to see live trivia being used successfully to bring a large and incredibly diverse group together, and to helping start out their academic journey on the right foot.
Are you in charge of student activities at your college or university? What activities have you used to bring classes of new students together at the start of the new academic semester? What’s worked well, and what hasn’t? We’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions below!