Zooming through Breakout Rooms

Zoom has become a large part of how we work and teach so here is a brief run through of Breakout Rooms. This is a feature that will help manage participants by splitting a meeting or tutorial into smaller separate groups.

Breakout rooms can help you with:

1. Facilitating small group discussions (e.g assign a different topic to each group and elect one member to present later to the larger group)
2. Splitting the group to up to 50 separate rooms (e.g assigning a problem that the group has to work on for their assignment)
3. Automatically or manually assigning participants to a group (e.g role-playing a specific scenario with a mix of different students)
4. Increase participant engagement (e.g larger sessions tend to get impersonal and participant voices and opinions can get lost)
5. Addressing specific topics (e.g holding a quick Q&A session for a specific group of students [such as external students])

Here is a short and sharp run through of how to create Breakout Rooms: (Created using the H5P Course Presentation which is also available on iLearn. Make sure to scroll through!)

Have you used Breakout rooms before? What did you think of them? We are currently using Breakout Rooms for our Online iLearn Drop in Clinics, it might be a good opportunity to see it in action there!

Additional links:

• MQBS Online Delivery Toolkit : A resource from MQBS that includes many Zoom tips and tricks including (but not limited to) Tips for Successful Zoom Meetings, Checking Authentication Settings and Tips to Minimise Bandwidth Issues During Live Sessions.

• Managing Breakout Rooms by Zoom : This is the official help site of Zoom and gives the most comprehensive and up to date how-to on Breakout Rooms and more.

• Using Breakout Rooms with Less Stress and Better Results : This article (c/o Faculty Focus) gives advice on how to best manage Zoom Breakout Rooms.

• Use of Zoom for Online Delivery: A past Teche post with pointers on how to use Zoom for online delivery.

• Technical issues with Zoom? Contact the Central IT Service desk!