The Integration of Using Ice-breaking in Improving Learning Refreshment in Higher Education: A Classroom Action Study

Cognitive, emotional, and physical fatigue is a serious problem that can affect students’ academic performance. Cognitive fatigue, caused by mental stress, a high workload, and ineffective learning strategies, can impair a student’s capacity to concentrate, understand, and process information well. It is also linked to emotional exhaustion, resulting from stress, anxiety, and other emotionalfactors, which can disrupt cognitive function and hinder learning capacity. Likewise, physical fatigue has an impact on student learning disorders. These problems can be overcome by teachers by increasing learning refreshment. To be able to do that, educators need to master and apply techniques in teaching so that learning can be more interesting. The technique that can be applied is to use ice-breaking techniques. The findings in this study show that ice-breaking can increase student learning refreshment in three indicators, namely cognitive refreshment, emotional refreshment, and physical refreshment. Utilization of ice-breaking in learning is effective in refreshing students’ cognitive abilities with an N gain value of 0.8 (hight), refreshing emotions, and physical abilities of 0.9 (hight). Overall, ice-breaking is able to provide learning refreshment to students by 0.9 (90%), which is classified as high. Ice-breaking is therefore an effective strategy for overcoming the cognitive, emotional, and physical fatigue of students, thus helping to improve the quality and effectiveness of learning. However, it should be considered that ice-breaking must be appropriate to the situation and needs of participants to achieve optimal results in overcoming academic fatigue.