Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms allow you to divide your Zoom meeting into separate sessions (50 max.), with participants in each session. Breakout Rooms are nearly identical to a regular Zoom meeting. The Host can manually select or automatically assign participants to each separate session.

Hosts and Co-hosts can create and manage breakout rooms, move between rooms, and broadcast messages to all.

Enabling breakout rooms (hosts only)

Enable Breakout Rooms in Settings under your Zoom profile

Creating

Start Breakout Rooms by selecting Breakout Rooms on the Zoom toolbar

Select the number of Breakout Rooms.
Add participants automatically or manually
- Automatically: Participants will be added evenly based on the number of rooms
- Manually: Participants can be added in any combination
- Let Participants choose room
Select Create Breakout Rooms to complete the setup. This does not start the Breakout Rooms

Options

Once created, select “gear icon” for room settings
When ready, select Open All Rooms to start the breakout sessions with all participants in their assigned rooms. The host remains in the main session and will have to join a breakout room manually.

Managing

When all breakout rooms are opened, the host enters a room by selecting Join at the Participants count

When joining, all users will see this message while entering a breakout room

A breakout room behaves nearly identical to a typical Zoom meeting. Hosts and co-hosts must leave a room in order to join another. Participants can only remain in their assigned room or leave to the main session, or select another room if allowed about host/co-hosts.

Hosts and co-hosts can join another room or leave by selecting Leave Room
Hosts and co-hosts can also close all rooms, returning all participants to the main session

Hosts and co-hosts can move a participant to other rooms or Main Session

Communicating during

Hosts and co-hosts can only broadcast one-way messages to all rooms. Hosts and co-hosts cannot send chat messages to the breakout rooms from the main session. While inside a room, participants cannot send chat messages to the host while inside a room, but can request assistance.

Hosts can send a broadcast message by selecting the Breakout Room button, then Broadcast a message to all

Participants can select the Ask for Help button to call the attention of the host

Hosts will receive the following notice

Recording

Local and cloud recording are available in the main session of a breakout room, and are the same as any Zoom meeting. Local recording is only available while in a breakout room. If recording is desired, it is recommend that the host assign a participant the permission to record locally.

Pre-assigning participants

Hosts can pre-assign participants to a meeting. Participants require a Zoom account to be pre-assigned. All Pitzer students can create a basic Zoom account. Non-Pitzer students can create a Zoom account through their respective home college.

In a meeting settings, select Breakout Room pre-assign to add participants

Select Create Rooms to set assignments
Add participants by entering their name, username@pitzer.edu or college email address

To open assigned rooms, select the Breakout Rooms button in a meeting, then Open All Rooms