Zoom provides a number of self-help resources about setting up and using breakout rooms. These include the following:
- Zoom 101: Breakout Rooms
- Pre-Assign Participants to Breakout Rooms
- Manage Breakout Rooms
- Participant in Breakout Rooms
Teaching Effectively with Breakout Rooms
Just like any instructional technology, it's important to carefully plan and prepare to use breakout rooms in your Zoom meetings. The following tips may prove useful as you evaluate whether or not breakout rooms are right for your class.
Planning/Preparation
- Decide how many breakout rooms you want to have and how many students should be assigned to each room.
- Decide whether you will assign students to breakout rooms manually or randomly.
- Create clear instructions/information for students about the breakout rooms and about the activity they will be completing within the small group.
- Practice at least once with some guest users (family, friends, colleagues) to ensure that you can move smoothly from the main room, to the breakout rooms, and then back to the main room.
Before Breakout Rooms Open
- Because students will not be able to see the PowerPoint, document, or other shared information from the main room once their enter their breakout rooms, provide students with a link to the activity materials, instructions, etc. before sending them into breakout rooms.
- Make sure that everyone understands what is expected of them before switching to breakout rooms.
- Remind students to have a short meet-and-greet/introduction session in the breakout rooms, since they may not already be familiar with everyone in their group.
During Breakout Rooms
- Drop in on each breakout room at least once.
- Listen in on the discussion and offer questions and/or clarification.
- Give each group a 2-3 minute warning before the breakout session ends, giving them time to wrap up their activity/assignment.
- When time is up, close the breakout rooms. Zoom will start a 60-second countdown, after which any students who haven't yet returned to the main room will be automatically transferred there.
Planning for Asynchronous Learners
- If you expect to have students who will be accessing the session via recorded video (asynchronously), it's a good idea to pause your recording when the breakout session begins (Zoom only records the main room when you are saving recordings to the cloud. If you have saving to your local computer, it will record wherever you go, from room to room, during the breakout period). In addition, make sure that you let asynchronous students know about any activity that you want them to complete in place of the group session.
