Breakout Rooms

When you decide you want to use breakouts for your class, you have two options for building your rooms. One option is you can build them ahead of time and pre-assign students to the rooms.

Zoom Considerations for Pre-assigning Students using CSV file

In order to utilize the pre-assign function using a CSV file in Zoom, all students must have confirmed their WWU Zoom accounts and logged to your class meeting using their WWU accounts.

For more information on using Zoom at Western and pre-assigning students to breakout rooms, please see the ATUS Help Doc on this subject.

There is also another new way to have save your assigned breakout rooms (up to 10 per user). The in-meeting save option only shows up for you in the breakouts dialog box if you have your meeting set up as a recurring meeting with a fixed time.

The other option is to build the breakouts during your class. Even with a large class, this can be done very quickly if you already know:

1. How many rooms you want to have.
2. Do you want students to choose which room they join, do you want to have them assigned to a room automatically, or do you want to assign them manually?

Note: even if you assign them automatically, you can still move students to different groups before opening the rooms.

Room Options:

1. Extra Rooms

You may want to consider building at least one extra breakout room for flexibility. Rooms can sit empty if you don’t need them. But if you need to have a private conference with a student, an extra room can be very useful. Sometimes, you need to rearrange or split your breakout room groups. Also, you may want a place to go yourself. The main room is not a private space, even when it is empty. Participants may be able to come back to that space. You might find yourself wanting to shift around the rooms when they are open. Although some platforms allow you to “Add a room,” this function may not be available while the rooms are open.

2. Naming Your Breakout Rooms

You can name the breakout rooms as you build them. After you enter how many rooms to create, the rooms will be named, “Room 1,” “Room 2,” etc. You can click on the room name and see the option to rename the room. If you have a very short prompt or topic for your room, why not rename the room with that topic? This can be a great way to have students choose discussion topics or create focus groups. You can also name the rooms by the type of work that might be done there. For example if you name your rooms, “work collaboratively”, “work on my own”, “work with a T.A.”, “ask instructor questions”, students then can select the room that suits their preference for time that you want to spend in class working on a project or task.

3. Setting Time Limits

Breakout rooms can be created with a set time limit. When the dialogue box for creating breakout rooms is open, there is an “options” button which includes the setting for closing the rooms automatically after a number of minutes. Alternately, you can tell the students what time the rooms will close or how long they will meet and then send them a message using the “broadcast to all rooms” button in the breakout room control menu to let them know time remaining. This is the same menu that you will use to “close all breakout rooms.” 

Note: In Zoom, the “broadcast to all rooms” broadcasts a text message for a very short duration. You may find it useful to copy the message before sending it, and then paste it to send the message again, so more students will see it. You also now have the option to broadcast an audio message to all rooms.

• Zoom Breakout Support

For more information about Breakout rooms, you can go to the Zoom support site.

Instructors can choose to be “hands-off” with the breakouts and give the students the space to work with each other on whatever task you set before them. For student success, be sure to communicate your expectations clearly before opening the rooms.

When you choose to have the students independently facilitating their interactions in their breakouts, you will still want to let them know how to ask you to join them if they need you.

Students Needing Help

Remind students that they can call you into the breakouts to for assistance. Before sending students to breakout rooms, it is useful to tell them how to call you for help. When they are in breakout rooms, participants can see a button labelled, “Ask for Help”; in Zoom, it should be next to “Reactions.” You (as the host) will get a message asking you to join their room.

Appearing in Breakout Rooms

If you do enter a breakout room, you will suddenly pop onto the screen as a participant. This can disrupt the “flow” of what the group is doing. Consider lessening this impact by:

1. Doing it regularly so it feels natural for everyone.
2. Turning off your video and renaming yourself something like “just checking in” or “any questions?” (If you are trying to be unobtrusive.)
3. Telling students before the breakout to expect that you will pop into their breakouts from time to time and explaining your expectations. For example: “Please finish your thought and then say “Hello” to me. I’ll ask if anyone has questions.” Or “Please just ignore me unless you have something you need to ask. Then wait for a break in what you are doing and ask.” Or “When I come into your room, please finish your thought and then report to me on how things are going.”

Moving Between Rooms

Both the host and the co-host have the ability to hop between breakout rooms. When you want to leave room 1 to go to room 2, the best way is to “Join room 2.” This will take you straight into the next room. If you “leave room 1”, it will take you back to the main room and then you will be able to “join room 2”. This works, but there is more lag time moving between rooms this way.

Sharing Your Screen from the Main Room to the Breakouts

It is now possible to use the “Share Screen” button to share your screen from the main room out to breakout rooms while they are active. The participants in all rooms will see a shared screen view of you and the information you choose to share in their room. This could be very useful at the beginning of your breakout time to show the task and time allotted for the breakouts. It will however, minimize the breakout room participants’ views of each other and take away their ability to share their own screens, so you may want to only share your screen for a limited time.