Zoom Breakout Rooms Options (EdTech Connect: August 2022)

by: Randy Spears

If you want to use Breakout Rooms in Zoom, you have three options. This brief article will explain those three options and the pros and cons of each one:

Assign Automatically
This, by far, is the easiest option. It randomly disperses your participants into different rooms. It is best for impromptu breakout rooms while you’re in a meeting and want your participants to intermingle. Once set up in a single instance of a meeting, the participants will return to the same group throughout that individual meeting. (To create different arrangements in the same meeting, you will need to use the Recreate function.)
PROS: Easy to set-up. Great for creating interaction among your participants.
CONS: You can’t control who is in what room. Not good for pre-arranged teams.

Manually Assign
This option allows you to manually assign participants to different rooms
PROS: Gives you control over who goes where.
CONS: Very cumbersome to assignment participants to breakout rooms with a large group.

Pre-Assigned
This option is the best if you have pre-assigned teams in Carmen. You can set these up, either manually in Zoom or use a CSV (spreadsheet file) to make your room assignments for your Zoom meeting.
PROS: Ensures that participants enter their correct pre-assigned rooms in Zoom.
CONS: Does take time to set up and participants MUST log into Zoom with their OSU credentials.

EXAMPLE format for CSV for Pre-Assigned Breakout Rooms

Instructors that want to use breakout rooms in Zoom extensively, should set up a test-run session with Randy Spears (spears.4)

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