Facilitating Zoom breakout rooms, for teachers

Zoom’s breakout rooms are a powerful tool for building more engaging online classes. That’s why I put together this how-to series to help you get started with breakout rooms, assign students to specific rooms, and, in this post, answer some common questions about facilitating breakout rooms, like:

• Can I screen share?

• Can I listen in on breakout rooms?

• Can I chat with students while they’re in breakout rooms?

• Can I broadcast messages to students in breakout rooms?

Can I screen share?

Yes! — but you can only screen share with the room, or breakout room, you are currently in. This means that if you are in the main room, you cannot “broadcast” a shared screen to all breakout rooms. However, if you join an individual breakout room, you can share your screen with the students in that room.

🚨 Common Pitfall Alert: This means that you cannot rely on screen sharing for communicating to your students what they should be doing in the breakout room.

Before sending everyone off into breakout rooms, make sure everyone is clear about what they should be doing in the rooms, and consider sending a link to your slides or instructions that students can refer to while in their breakout room.

Students can screen share within a breakout room, even if screen share for attendees is disabled in the main room. Only one person can screen share at a time in each breakout room, even if multiple people are allowed to share simultaneously in the main room.

Can I listen in on breakout rooms?

You can easily hop between breakout rooms to listen in on any given room. Hosts and co-hosts can join any room by clicking Join. Anyone in a breakout room can click Ask For Help to request that the host join the breakout room.

You cannot, however, see or hear what is happening in breakout rooms that you are not in. Similarly, you can record any breakout room you are in, but you cannot record breakout rooms that you are not in.

Can I chat with students while they’re in breakout rooms?

Yes! — but, again, you can only chat with students if you are in the same room as them. (Yes, it’s a huge bummer.) Here’s more about how chat works during breakout rooms:

• Each breakout room has its own chat that is only viewable to participants in that breakout room. That means students can chat with everyone in their breakout room, but they can’t chat with anyone outside their room, and nobody outside can chat with them.

• The main room’s chat, too, is only viewable in the main room. In other words, the main room chat is not viewable in the breakout rooms. The good news is that everything posted in the main room chat is still visible when students come back from their breakout rooms.

✅ Pro-tip: Use the chat to share a link to a slideshow, worksheet, or any other materials that students might need while in the breakout rooms.

🚨 Common Pitfall Alert: …but, if you do share a link in the chat, make sure to do so *before* opening breakout rooms! Once students have left for their breakout rooms, you cannot chat students who are in “rooms” outside of the one you’re in, except by broadcasting (see below).

Can I broadcast messages to students in breakout rooms?

Yes! You can easily broadcast a message to all breakout rooms:

But, unfortunately, students can’t chat you back. Students can ask you to join their breakout rooms via the Ask for Help button:

🚨 Common Pitfall Alert: The broadcasted message is not very prominent and only stays up for a few seconds — so I wouldn’t recommend relying on this channel to communicate important information!

What’s next?

Okay, so you’ve figured out how to facilitate Zoom breakout rooms. Now, how are you going to use them to foster deeper learning in your virtual classroom? Check out other posts on the TeachFX blog for ideas and tips.