Technology – Zoom Breakout Rooms – Saint Leo University Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence

Breakout rooms allow faculty to seamlessly split a Zoom meeting into separate sessions for small group discussion and collaboration and then bring those sessions back together to resume the large group meeting. As the meeting host, you can automatically or manually group participants into these separate sessions before or during a session. Follow these steps to create and implement Breakout Rooms successfully.

Video Tutorial

Step 1:

Create the lesson or activity you will use with the breakout rooms. Here are some recommendations.

1. Choose an active learning strategy from one of these websites:

2. Assign clear instructions to students before sending them to their breakout rooms
3. Assign roles to students such as facilitator, timekeeper, notetaker, and reporter
4. Require each group to produce something.

They should have an answer to a question or a solution to a problem to bring back to the main group.

They can work on a collaborative document or on the Zoom whiteboard.

Step 2: Enable Breakout Rooms

Log in to your Saint Leo Zoom account.
From the menu setting, scroll down to Breakout room and make sure it is turned on.

Step 3: (Optional)

Here are the instructions for Pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms.

Step 4: Begin class and manage breakout rooms

Before starting breakout rooms, you will want to:
- Review expectations for what should happen in the breakout rooms
- Practice using breakout rooms with a few colleagues before using it in class
- Assign roles to each student
- Require each group to produce something
Manage breakout rooms
- Allow your students to share their screen in breakout rooms by adjusting the settings in the main meeting.
- Monitor groups