Zoom: Create and use breakout rooms

Zoom “breakout rooms” allow you to split a meeting into smaller groups:

• The host or a co-host sets up the breakout rooms, either randomly assigning participants to rooms, manually assigning them, or letting them choose rooms, and clicks Open All Rooms.
• When participants join the breakout rooms, they can talk and chat with others in that room and share video and screens if allowed to in the main meeting. The host and co-hosts can remain in the main session or visit breakout rooms.
• The host or a co-host clicks Close All Rooms to return everyone to the main meeting.

Set up your breakout rooms

The host or a co-host can start and must finish setting up breakout rooms after the meeting starts and participants have joined. This does not necessarily disrupt the meeting; participants cannot see or join breakout rooms until Open All Rooms is clicked.

Optional pre-assignments

If you plan to assign people to specific breakout groups and you know in advance who will be attending, you can pre-assign rooms before the meeting starts. Pre-assigned participants will appear in the correct breakout rooms when the host or a co-host clicks on Breakout Rooms during the meeting, if they have logged into the Zoom accounts associated with their pre-registration. The host or a co-host will still need to manually assign people who haven’t logged in, logged into a different Zoom account, or don’t have a pre-assignment. Pre-assignments also apply to all instances of a recurring meeting; if you want to pre-assign people to different groups each meeting, create them as separate non-recurring meetings instead.

The person scheduling the meeting must make pre-assignments and can only do this in the Zoom web portal:

1. Go to brynmawr-edu.zoom.us, choose Sign in with SSO, and log in with your Bryn Mawr username and password.
2. Click Schedule a New Meeting OR click the Meetings tab, find your meeting and click Edit to open the Meeting Settings page.
3. Under Meeting Options, check Breakout Room pre-assign, then click Edit, then follow the appropriate steps for your case below.

If all meeting participants have Bryn Mawr Zoom accounts.

If some participants don’t have BMC accounts (for example, those from Haverford or Swarthmore, which have their own institutional Zoom licenses).

During the meeting

Once the meeting has started and participants have joined (or at least started joining) the host or a co-host needs to:

1. Click Breakout Rooms.
2. If you haven’t made pre-assignments:
   1. Select the number of rooms you want and how to assign participants to them:
      • Automatically: Zoom splits participants randomly and evenly across rooms.
      • Manually: You assign participants to specific rooms.
      • Let participants choose room
   2. Click Create Breakout Rooms.
3. The Breakout Rooms window lists available rooms and — if you chose automatic assignments or made pre-assignments — the  participants assigned to them. From this window, you can:
   • Rename rooms: Hover over the room name and clicking Rename.
   • Change the number of rooms: Click Add a Room and Delete Room buttons.
   • Add participants: Click Assign (empty rooms) or the number of participants and check the box next to their names.
   • Reassign participants: Hover over a name and click Move to specify where to place them or Exchange to specify whom to swap places with.
     
   • Recreate: reset to pre-assignments (if available) go back to the Create Breakout Rooms window.
   • Options: Adjust breakout room settings
     • Allow participants to choose room. Check if you want participants to be able to choose their own breakout rooms.
     • Allow participants to return to the main session at any time: Uncheck to prevent participants from returning to the main meeting if they exit a breakout room before you have closed them.
     • Automatically move all assigned participants into breakout rooms: Check to send participants who already have room assignments to their breakout rooms automatically when you click Open All Rooms.
     • Auto close breakout rooms after () minutes: Check to automatically close the breakout rooms after the specified time elapses. (If you check Notify me … the host and co-host will get an alert before this happens.)
     • Countdown after closing breakout rooms: Give participants a grace period to wrap up breakout conversations. Click Close All Rooms to display and start the timer; when it reaches zero, participants who are still in their breakout rooms will be sent back to the main meeting.

Start, manage, and close breakout rooms

Each breakout room is a mini-clone of the main Zoom meeting. Participants have the same permissions in the breakout rooms as they do in the main meeting. Exception: all participants can chat and mute/unmute themselves while in the breakout rooms. There is no way to change this.

• If you want participants to have different screen- or video-sharing abilities while in breakout rooms, click Security and change the settings in the main meeting immediately before you open the breakout rooms.
• Zoom cloud recordings capture only the main meeting room. If you need to record one or more breakout rooms, you will need to enable local recording for the meeting and ask someone in those breakout rooms to make a local recording.
• If you need to share documents with breakout room participants, you can:
  • Post the in the main meeting chat and ask participants to download them before opening the breakout rooms.
  • Arrange for one person (a participant or co-host) in each breakout room to have the documents and be responsible of posting them to or sharing their screen to display them within that room.

As soon as the host or a co-host clicks Open All Rooms

While breakout rooms are in session

Questions?

If you have any additional questions or problems, don't hesitate to reach out to the Help Desk!

Phone: 610-526-7440 | Library and Help Desk hours
Email: help@brynmawr.edu | Service catalog
Location: Canaday Library 1st floor