How to create and manage Breakout rooms in Zoom,

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 subsessions.

There are two methods of creating breakout rooms (both are documented in this article):

During a meeting: This the easiest and recommended way of creating breakout rooms. Room assignments can be adjusted at any time.
Before a meeting: Pre-assigning students into different groups can be done when scheduling a meeting (or editing an already scheduled meeting) NOTE: this preassignment method is not available via Zoom in Canvas - it has to be done via the whitman web portal: whitman.zoom.us

There are a some options to help you manage breakout rooms. These are accessed via the Options sub menu on the bottom of the Breakout Rooms list window (This window will appear during the creation and assignment of your breakout rooms)

Move all participants into breakout rooms automatically. If ticked, this will force (without asking) everyone that is assigned to a breakout room into that room once the Open All Rooms button is clicked. If not ticked, the participants will be presented with a pop-up invitation to join their assigned breakout room when the Open All Rooms button is clicked.

Allow participants to return to the main session at any time. When ticked, participants can leave the breakout room and join the main meeting room at anytime. This is a good option if your groups will be breaking in and out of their breakout rooms several times during a session. If left unticked then participants cannot leave the breakout rooms until the rooms are closed by you or by an expiration counter (see below). NOTE: Once the breakout rooms are closed, recreating the same rooms with the same assignments is not easily done. If you plan on reusing the same group assignments during a meeting. it is recommended that you tick this box, and then cue participants to come out of and back into their groups as needed.

Breakout rooms close automatically after XX minutes. If ticked, this will automatically close the breakout rooms after the number of minutes you enter in the box
- Notify me when time is up. If you need a reminder of when the breakout rooms are closing, tick this box.

Countdown after closing breakout room. When ticked, this will provide a countdown to the participants in a breakout room, allowing them to prepare to join the main meeting. The choice of how long the countdown duration is either: 10, 15, 30, 60, or 120 seconds.

A Note about Recording and Breakout rooms. If you plan on recording your meeting, please be aware that only the main/plenary session will be recorded. The breakout rooms are not recorded. If you would like to record the breakout rooms, you will have to rely on a participant in each breakout room to record their sesion and share the recording with you later.

Creating Breakout Rooms

Method 1: During a meeting (recomended)

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 on Breakout Rooms tool
A pop up window will show how many participants are in attendance and allow for the creation of however many break out rooms are needed (up to 50 breakout rooms).
Select or enter how many rooms to create
Choose to assign the rooms either Automatically or Mannually. Then click on the Create Rooms
1. 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 particpants name and moving them to a different room.
2. Mannually - The nunmber 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.
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.

Method 2: Before a meeting, Pre-planned Breakout rooms:

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, 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 not all participants always join a Zoom meeting by using their Whitman email address, enabaling Only authenticated users can join: Sign in to Zoom can be a way of forcing users to sign in with their Whitman credentials. This has the disadvantage of preventing any participants that are outside of whitman from joining a class session.

Using the built-in Zoom interface to Pre-assign breakout rooms:

1. sign into whitman.zoom.us
2. Click on the Schedule a Meeting button on the far right of the screen
3. Fill out and select all the parameters of your meeting, before you save - make sure you do the following:
4. Under Meeting Options, tick Breakout Room pre-assign
5. Click on + Create Rooms
6. 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)
7. Clilck 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"
8. Repeat for every student
9. Click on Save

Using the Imort from CSV File method of assigning breakout rooms.

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:
Under Meeting Options, tick Breakout Rooms pre-assign

Click on

Import from CSV

At the top of the "Import Rooms and Participants from CSV file" window click on download and open this file.

Open the downloaded file with Excel or other spreadsheet program
1. This file will consist of two colums: Pre-assign Room Name and Email Address - DO NOT REMOVE THE COLUMN NAMES (HEADERS) OF THIS FILE
Fill in out this table with room numbers and email addresses. The room number column will have several repeated entries, but the email address column should list each email address only once. A sample is below:

Pre-assign Room Name	Email Address
room1	unique_student@whitman.edu
room1	not_the_same@whitman.edu
room2	another_student@whitman.edu
room2	individual_student@whitman.edu
room3	not_repeated_student@whitman.edu
room3	particular_student@whitman.edu

Save this file as a CSV (Comma delimited) file. Microsoft Excel may warn you about loosing some features of your workbook if you save it as a CSV file, that is ok - continue to save it as a CSV. Also, note the location where you saved it (you may need to access it during a meeting)
Back in the "Import Rooms and Participants from CSV file" pop up window: Either "Drag and Drop your CSV file" into the large gray box (or click on browe, and select the location of the file you just saved, then click open).
Zoom will save your pre-assignments and break out rooms. You can verify this by looking under the option for Breakout Room pre-assign option, the number of rooms created will be listed with the ability to click on Edit to change your pre-assignments

Launching and Managing Breakout rooms:

Whether your breakout room assignments were preplanned (as in Method 2 above) or they have yet to be assigned (as in Method 1 above), the way you launch Breakout rooms is the same - through the Breakout Rooms tool in the meeting control toolbar during a meeting.

Clicking on the Breakout Rooms icon during a meeting will open a window that shows a list of the breakout rooms as you planned (if you did so), with the room assignments. You can edit the room assignments before opening the rooms by clicking on particular names an moving them to a different room. When you are ready to have the groups break away, simply click on the Open all Breakout Rooms button. The window title will change to Breakout Room - In progress. If you did not pre-plan breakout rooms, you will follow the steps under Method 1 above.

Once all the particpants leave for their own breakout rooms, the host will be left alone in the main room. Clicking on the Breakout rooms tool in the meeting control toolbar will bring up a list of all the active breakout rooms. Next to each breakout room there will be a blue join link, which will allow you to join any particular breakout room. Also in the Breakout Rooms - In Progress window, there will be a Broadcast a message to all button and a Close All Rooms button. Note that the way to communicate with everyone when they are in their respective breakout rooms is to use the Broadcast a message to all button and NOT the Chat button.

The Breakout Rooms - In Progress window will look like this (note the Broadcas a message to all and Join links):

Some potential failures with breakout rooms:

If you edit your meeting at all, even if it does not involve the breakout rooms feature, be sure to double 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 why creating breakout rooms after a meeting starts is recomended. 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 tick the Only authenticated users can join box when scheduling your meeting, only those participants who have authenticated through a Whtiman authentication service will be able to join. Outside guests will be excluded.
When participants show up late, they will not be automatically placed in the breakout rooms, be sure to keep an eye on your particpant list to see if someone is in the waiting room. Once admitted you can place them in a breakout room from the Breakout Room list window
You cannot use the Chat feature to send everyone in a meeting a message, once the breakout rooms are open. Use the Broadcast a message to all button instead (located on the bottom of the Breakout Rooms - in progress window)
If you want to share any content (via Chat), share this content before you open the breakout rooms. This is a lot easier than joining each session individually and sharing content. Share before you open.
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 the option to press a Join Breakout Room button