Purpose: To encourage interaction between participants and build different small groups for exercises.

 Time Required: 15 minutes.

 Size of Group: Can vary, according to trainer’s need.

 Materials Required: Selected comic strips, cut into individual panels in advance by the trainer.

 The Exercise in Action: Using comic strips can make dividing large groups into several smaller ones fast and enjoyable, says MaryAnn Dana, an associate project manager with Craft and Miertschin in Houston. She separates the panels of several comics, shuffles them, and hands one to each participant. Their job is to find the other panels to complete their strips.

There are several ways to apply the technique, depending on whether your primary objective is to form groups, or whether you’re using the exercise as a mixer, too.

For maximum interaction of participants, use different issues of the same comic strip. For example, to divide a class of 20 into five groups of four, distribute squares from five Dilbert cartoons, each having four separate panels. The difficulty of the exercise forces greater interaction. If creating groups is your primary interest, make it easy. One set of people gets Peanuts pictures, another gets Doonesbury, and so on.

The method is flexible enough to fit many small group sizes. For larger subsets, look to the Sunday paper, which often features comics with 10 or more panels. Three or four panels is typical of a weekday feature.