Zoom Breakout Rooms allows you to split your Zoom meeting into separate sessions for small group discussion, and then bring those sessions back together to resume the large group meeting.

The Basics and Limitation of Breakout Rooms

• 50 Breakout Rooms can be created per meeting. The maximum number of participants in a single breakout room depends on the meeting capacity, number of breakout rooms created, and if participants are assigned during the meeting or before the meeting.
• Users joined into the Zoom meeting from the Zoom Mobile App can participate in breakout rooms, but cannot manage them. Users joined using Chromebooks/Chrome OS or Zoom Rooms are unable to join breakout Rooms, but the main room can be used as an alternative session for these users.
• The host needs to allow recording before opening the breakout rooms. If the host has already open the breakouts rooms, they can join participant’s breakout room sessions to allow recordings. Multiple participants can record locally.
• Breakout Room participants have full audio, video and screen share capabilities
• Hosts can move between Breakout Rooms. The co-host can leave and join any breakout room only if they join a breakout room assigned to them by the host.

Step 1

Make sure breakout rooms is enabled

• Sign in to Zoom as the host
• In the navigation menu, click Account Settings.
• Navigate to the Breakout Room option on the In Meeting (Advanced) tab and verify that the setting is enabled.
• If the setting is disabled, click the toggle to enable it. If a verification dialog displays, choose Turn On to verify the change.
• (Optional) Click the checkbox to allow meeting hosts to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms.

Step 2

Launch Breakout Rooms during a meeting as a Host

Step 3

Preassigning and Assigning Breakout Rooms in Meeting

To assign participants to Breakout Rooms manually, open the breakout room sessions and you will select Assign next to the room you wish to assign participants to and select participants you want to assign to that room and you will repeat this for each room.

The least complicated process is to assign breakout rooms during the meeting, but if you have the same teams every session and have a significant amount of people, then you could possibly use pre-assign breakout rooms. Please note this process is advanced as it requires users to have a zoom account and know how to sign in properly in order for it to work.

Note: This process is advanced as it requires users to have a zoom account and know how to sign in properly in order for it to work.

Tips:

• Make sure you have enabled breakout rooms before trying to launch breakout room sessions
• Practice using Breakout Rooms before trying it for the first time as a meeting host and as a co-host to test out the features.
• Plan ahead to make sure you have the desired amount of breakout rooms created for the proper amount of participants if you are reassigning rooms.

Visit eLearning’s Zoom technology webpage for more information on Zoom.