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Breakout rooms: A tool available to the host of a Zoom meeting that allows for the assignment of students into different groups. The groups can then "breakout" into separate "rooms" and have sessions of their own. The host can join any of the sessions and switch between any of the sessions at any time. The sessions can be vacated, and students can come back to the main meeting. The main meeting is akin to a plenary session and the breakout rooms are the different sub-sessions.
This tool/feature is turned on and available by default on all Whitman Zoom accounts, if you do not see the Breakout Rooms tool in the meeting controls toolbar, nor the option to create pre-assigned breakout rooms when scheduling in the web portal, check your individual account settings. Please make sure that the Zoom client you and your attendees are using is the latest version. To check for Zoom updates, see this article.
There are two methods of creating breakout rooms (both are documented in this article):
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The simplest way to create breakout rooms is to use the Breakout Rooms tool once a meeting has started. This has the advantage of creating and assigning breakout rooms based on the people that are actually in attendance, regardless of how they accessed the meeting (i.e. they could have entered with a non-Whitman email address). Here is how to do it:
- Click During a meeting, click on the Breakout Rooms tool (
) located in the meeting controls toolbar. - A pop up window will show how many participants are in attendance and allow for the creation of breakout rooms.
- Select the number of rooms to create via the dropdown menu or directly enter the number of rooms in the box (up to 50).
- Choose to assign the rooms either Automatically, Manually, or Let participants choose which room to enter. (each option is explained below) Then click on the Create Rooms.
- Automatically - Zoom assigns attendees to break out rooms. Note - Once the room assignments are created, you can still edit the assignments, before you open up the rooms by clicking on a participants name and moving them to a different room.
- Manually - The number of rooms you specified will be listed numerically. Click on the Assign link next to each room, then click on the names of the participants you want to assign to that room. Repeat for each of the remaining rooms. If you want to swap a participant with another, simply select their names and move them to the room you want.
- Let participants choose room - The attendees can choose which room they will break out to. When using this option, it may help to rename or title each breakout room with a descriptive name, instead of the the default "Room x." To change the name of a room, hover the mouse/cursor over the room in the list of rooms and click on Rename and type in the name of the room. Also note that this method of assigning rooms allows for an uneven distribution of attendees in rooms. - You may end up with everyone in one breakout room!
- When ready to open up the breakout rooms, click on the Open All Rooms button. Participants will leave the main meeting for their breakout rooms, and the host remains in the main meeting room (but you can join any of the rooms at any time, see Launching and Managing Breakout rooms below).
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Pre-planning breakout rooms can be a time saver, if done properly, - and the pre-assignments can be saved as a CSV file to use in later class sessions. Pre-planning break out rooms is accomplished during the scheduling phase of a meeting via the Zoom scheduling interface, and/or by uploading a spreadsheet (saved in CSV format only) of your room assignments. Both methods rely on assigning participants by the email address you think they will use when joining a meeting. Since some participants may join a Zoom meeting by clicking on a zoom invitation link without ever having signed into their Whitman zoom account, selecting Require authentication to join, with the sub-option of Sign in with Whitman SSO (whitman.zoom.us) forces all attendees to sign-in with their Whitman e-mail address before they join. This then allows Zoom to assign all the participants who join to the breakout room you assigned by using the same Whitman e-mail address you used in planning the breakout rooms. Note, selecting Sign in with Whitman SSO (whitman.zoom.us) also prevents any participants that do not have a whitman.edu email address from joining a class session. If you need an outside member to join the class and you are using breakout rooms, then then choose the Sign in with any Zoom account sub-option.
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- sign into whitman.zoom.us
- Click on the Schedule a Meeting button on the far right of the screen
- Fill out and select all the parameters of your meeting, before you save - make sure you do the following:
- Select Require Authentication to Join
- In the dropdown menu, select Sign in with Whitman SSO (whitman.zoom.us)
- Under Meeting Options, select Breakout Room pre-assign
- Click on + Create Rooms
- Click on the + (next to Rooms) to create a room, click on + again to create another room, and so on and so forth. Each room will be labeled as Breakout Room"X" (x being the number of the room)
- Click on the room you want to assign students to (it will be highlighted in blue), and add the student's email address under the Breakout Room"X"
- Repeat for every room, until there are no students left to assign
- Click on Save
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- If you edit your meeting at all, even if it does not involve the breakout rooms feature, be sure to check that the breakout rooms are still pre-assigned after you save your meeting edits. Sometimes, adding an alternative host, or changing a meeting parameter causes Zoom to drop the pre-assigned breakout rooms. This is a known fault that Zoom is working on. This is part of the reason creating breakout rooms after a meeting starts is recommended. Having the CSV file of your pre-assigned breakout rooms is handy, in case you have to quickly reload it before the session starts. Alternatively, reloading your preassigned breakout rooms could be the last thing you do after any meeting edits.
- If you select the Only authenticated users can join box Require Authentication to Join box with the drop-down option set to Sign in with Whitman SSO (whitman.zoom.us) when scheduling your meeting, only those participants who have authenticated through a Whitman authentication service will be able to join. Outside guests will be excluded.
- If participants show up late, they will be directed to a waiting room, and will not be automatically placed in the breakout rooms. Check your participant list to see if someone is in the waiting room. Once a new participant is admitted, you can place them in a breakout room from the Breakout Room list window.
- Once the breakout rooms are open, you cannot use the Chat feature to send a message to everyone in a meeting. Rather, use the Broadcast a message to all button instead. The button is located on the bottom of the Breakout Rooms - In Progress window.
- It is easiest to share a document with attendees via the Chat feature before you open the breakout rooms.
- Each participant in a breakout room has the ability to press an Ask for Help button in their toolbar. When pressed this will send the host a message, giving the name of the person who asked for help, the breakout room they are in, and will present to the host the option to press a Join Breakout Room button.
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