Your team gets a party. You get a sneaky rehearsal for your next virtual session.
Somewhere in your organization, someone just said, “We should do something fun for Halloween.” And because you know how the virtual platform works, guess who’s planning it?
Let’s be honest. Planning a virtual party can feel like one more thing on a full plate. But here’s the thing that sometimes get missed: every good virtual party game is a facilitation skill in a costume. The same moves that get people laughing on a Friday afternoon keep learners engaged in your next vILT session.
So, this year, plan the party and practice your craft at the same time. Here are six ideas, each paired with the skill it quietly builds.
- The pet costume parade
- Ask people to send a photo of their pet in costume (or their pet looking deeply unimpressed by a costume). Show them as a slideshow, then let the group vote with a poll for categories like Most Dramatic and Most Likely to Bite the Photographer.
- The skill underneath: launching polls quickly and sharing results without losing momentum.
- The haunted background contest
- Everyone switches to their spookiest virtual background. Give people two minutes to change, then switch to gallery view and let the votes roll in. Bonus points for anyone who builds a background in Canva.
- The skill underneath: managing gallery view and spotlighting so the right people are seen at the right time.
- Annotation pumpkin carving
- Share a blank pumpkin on a whiteboard and let small teams carve it together with annotation tools. It gets chaotic fast, and that’s the point. Somebody always adds a mustache.
- The skill underneath: setting up annotation, giving clear instructions, and clearing the screen when it’s time to move on.
- Spooky trivia
- Run five quick rounds of Halloween trivia using built-in polls or a quiz tool. Keep each round under three minutes so the energy stays up.
- The skill underneath: pacing. Trivia teaches you exactly how long people will wait before they check their email.
- Escape the haunted LMS
- Here’s the story: your whole team is trapped inside a cursed eLearning course, and the Next button won’t work until they break three locks. Each breakout room races to escape in seven minutes.
- Paste all three locks into each room’s chat, or put them on one slide, before you open the rooms.
- Lock 1: Unscramble the cursed course words. TOSHG, ZUIQ, and ROBSTARYOD
- Lock 2: Solve the riddle. The more of me you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
- Lock 3: Crack the escape code. Each number stands for a letter of the alphabet, so 1 is A and 26 is Z: 20, 18, 5, 1, 20
- When a room breaks all three locks, they call you in with the Ask for Help button (or come back to the main room) and say the escape code. The first room to escape wins, and everyone gets the code word they were fighting for. Answer key: ghost, quiz, and storyboard. Footsteps. TREAT.
- The skill underneath: running timed breakouts. Write the instructions so a room can start without you, broadcast a hint at minute three and minute five to any room that’s stuck, and send a one-minute warning before you close the rooms. That rhythm keeps every room moving, whether it’s a party or a practice scenario.
- The scariest words in L&D
- Ask everyone to type the most frightening sentence a stakeholder has ever said to them, but not to hit Enter yet. Think “Can you just make it more interactive?” or “We need this by Friday, and the content isn’t final.” When you count down and yell “Boo!”, everyone sends it at once. The chat fills with horror stories, and the room collectively shrieks in recognition. Let people react with an emoji to the one that gave them chills and crown the winner.
- The skill underneath: the chat waterfall, one of the simplest ways to get every voice in the room at once. Holding Enter until the signal keeps the first answer from steering everyone else, a trick that works just as well in your next training session.
I put together three free sheets, so you don’t have to start from scratch. The party run-of-show is a one-page, 30-minute agenda with timing for each segment and a column for your producer. The spooky trivia and icebreaker cards are ready to drop into a poll or paste into the chat. The I Spy is just a fun brain break. Screen share it or print it and see who finds everything first.
Print them, share them with your co-host, or just keep them open during the party. They’re yours.
And if you’re an #IgniteLearning VIP member, join us live on Wednesday, Oct 21, where we’ll practice these moves together, and you’ll get the editable Canva versions of both sheets.
Not a member? #IgniteLearning Membership is open for a limited time, but the doors will be closing this week and won’t reopen until next year.
🔥Pick your Spark
Here’s my challenge for you this week. Pick at least ONE that feels right, but still a little out of your comfort zone. The kind that makes you a little squeamish, but not the kind that makes you want to hide under your desk.
- Quiet: Add one Halloween poll question to a meeting you’re already running this week.
- Brave: Run one of the six ideas with your team, even if it’s just 10 minutes at the start of a meeting.
- Bold: Host the full 30-minute party using the run-of-show and invite a colleague to produce it with you.
Grab the free party kit.
About Dani Watkins
Dani is the founder of #IgniteLearning and the owner of Zenith Performance Solutions. She’s an instructional designer, trainer, and eLearning developer who creates practical resources for in-house L&D professionals, and she presents regularly for Training Magazine.
Portions of this article were drafted, outlined, or edited with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools. The final content has been thoroughly reviewed, verified, and approved by human editors, who assume full editorial responsibility for its publication.