Ranking My Classroom Activities
December 22, 2025
This semester, I returned to the classroom as an adjunct professor, teaching two sections of Introduction to Communication—one online and one in-person. These two sections were taught quite differently due to the limitations of asynchronous learning. While my online class may not have had the opportunity to engage in classroom activities, my in-person class did and it was a huge success.
Here's my personal ranking of all the activities I ran during the fall semester, based on how well they related to the learning material, the personal commitment it required to run the activity, and how well the activity ran/was received by the students.
Red Flag or Green Flag
Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 5/5
Student Reception: 2/5
This activity was part of the lecture on interpersonal communication. It was not my original plan to run this activity, but a few hours before the class, my original plan fell through and this was a last-minute alternative. The premise is putting scenarios up on the screen one at a time. The students then decide as a group if they are green flags, red flags, or require further discussion. (e.g. "A person texts you multiple times a day," "They try to mediate every argument you have with someone else," "A person agrees with everything you say.") These almost always lead to a conversation, especially when you change the scenario a bit by making the person a friend, a coworker, or a boss, which usually led to a difference in answer.
This game is easy to lead, only requiring a few slides and pre-drafted scenarios, but I found there were much better activities to relate to the material, and the challenge wasn't there for the students to sink their teeth into, being met with a lukewarm overall reaction to the game. This was also done halfway through the semester, so the class was comfortable engaging with me and each other at this point. This is the only activity on this list I would not run again.
Taboo
Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 2/5
Student Reception: 4.5/5
This activity was part of the lecture on verbal and nonverbal communication. What makes this game difficult to run is a) you have to purchase the game, which I would recommend two copies of and b) it's the game on this list with the most rules, and anyone who has been to a dinner party with a board game knows, it's hard to get everyone to pay attention when all they want to do is play the game.
This game was the first one we ran during the semester, so it was a nice, easy way for students to start to get to know each other. I bought two copies of the game at Five Below and split my class up into two, ten-person groups, with five students on each team (that's twenty students in all, if you lost track). Overall, the students enjoyed themselves quite a bit and it's something they asked for more time to play because of how much fun they were having.
Internet Sleuth
Relatability to Material: 4.5/5
Ease of Running: 5/5
Student Reception: 3.5/5
This activity was part of the lecture on research & organization. I borrowed this concept from my public speaking professor in 2017, and one I was really excited to run leading up to this semester. The class has twenty minutes to act as internet sleuths and find as much information about you, the professor, as possible. This is a fun one if you are more online than not. For someone like me with public social profiles, press, public presentations, etc..., the students had a lot to pick from. It also helps that there are other people with my name, so students had to pay close attention in making sure it was the correct William Careri.
At the end of the twenty minutes, the class used Boggle rules to see who had the most unique facts or pieces of information about me. The only thing that's not as fun about this one is how quiet it can get in the classroom. You can choose to have them run this in teams instead of individuals, creating more dialogue, but I just played music for my class during the duration of their research.
Two Truths and a Lie
Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 3/5
Student Reception: 3.5/5
This activity was part of the lecture on communication apprehension. Most know the concept of this game—a student stands up at the front of the class and states three facts about themselves, two of which are true and one is a lie. The class then has sixty seconds to ask questions to try and identify which statement is the lie. This one requires a little more involvement as a facilitator: timing the questions, providing and collecting notecards with the three facts, and counting votes on which the class thinks the false statement is.
I would recommend a) Participating as the first speaker to break the ice a bit and b) Doing this as the first speaking assignment if you have multiple, just because the time commitment of two minutes in front of the class breaks the ice and is a fun way to ease them into being front and center.
Island Survivor
Relatability to Material: 4/5
Ease of Running: 5/5
Student Reception: 5/5
This activity was part of the lecture on persuasion. There are a few versions of this game online, but this is the one I went with. You can break your class up into two or more groups. This day, I had less students than usual, so I had two groups of seven. Each group is given a worksheet (or in my class, I just put it up on the screen) with the following prompt: "You were aboard a cruise ship when a storm caused the ship to capsize. You and several others survived and reached a nearby desert island. One passenger managed to save a survival kit containing a small, limited supply of food, but only enough for five people. Your group must now decide which five individuals should receive the food to remain healthy and strong, and be prepared to justify your choices."
The next slide has the names, ages, and occupations of fifteen people, which they have to limit to five to receive food. This one was extremely fun to watch as a professor, seeing the arguments and methods of persuasion students chose to utilize in order to get their preferred person on the list of survivors. I also ran this late in the semester, so students were more comfortable with each other to offer genuinely funny and obscure rationale they may not have early in the semester.
Egg Drop
Relatability to Material: 5/5
Ease of Running: 2/5
Student Reception: 5/5
This activity was part of the lecture on small group communication. I borrowed this concept from my speech communication professor in 2016, though I know it's typically used in middle school science classes. I gave my students a newspaper, popsicle sticks, some tape, a single sheet of bubble wrap, and an egg. They had fifteen minutes to create something that would keep the egg safe while I dropped it down a flight of stairs (roughly twelve feet). My twist: they would be given two opportunities, but their supplies would not replenish. This made them be more resourceful, and also allowed them to try a new strategy when or if their first one failed, which both teams had occur the first time, but both succeeded the second.
This was by far the most fun the students had all semester. I ran it in the first half of the semester and acted as a major turning point for their comfort levels with each other. This was the only time they became so loud that I received a noise complaint from campus security, which also served as an inside joke we retained the rest of the semester.
Teaching shorter lectures and then using games to have my students more engaged with the material was tremendously useful. Not only was this crucial for a public speaking-heavy class when it came to comfort levels with each other, but for a generation where you need to keep things fresh every thirty or forty minutes, these activities served as variation in the learning process. Their grades also reflected that the material was retained better, with many revisiting previous lectures later in the semester to give them competitive advantages in future activities.
I will mix up games in future semesters, but some will become permanent staples.