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Zoom: Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms are sessions that are split off from the main Zoom meeting. They allow the participants to meet in smaller groups. Breakout rooms can be used for collaboration and discussion of the main meeting.

  • Up to 50 breakout rooms can be created
  • Maximum of 200 total participants across all breakout rooms
  • Breakout room participants have full audio, video, and & screen share capabilities

Pre-Assign Breakout Rooms

Follow these steps to set up breakout rooms prior to your class.

  1. Connect to the web version of Zoom.
  2. Select Setting in the menu on the left
  3. Scroll to In Meeting (Advanced)
  4. Enable both Breakout Room and Allow host to assign participants to breakout rooms when scheuling
  5. Schedule the meeting through the web browser to add breakout rooms
  6. Click Schedule a Meeting and fill out the information
    Note: Previously scheduled meetings can be edited if the groups are the same
  7. Select these 3 options:
    1. Enable Join Before Host
    2. Only authenticated users can sign into Zoom
    3. Breakout Room pre-assign
  8. To import the pre-defined breakout groups, click "Import from CSV"  and upload the file (instructions to follow on creating the CSV file).
  9. Once the meeting is started, you should see "Breakout Groups" at the bottom. Click to launch.
    Note: Participants must use the account/email imported from the CSV file.

Creating the Import file to Pre-Define Breakout Groups

  1. Download Sample CSV file
  2. Open the file in Excel
  3. Fill in the Pre-assign Room Name column with the breakout room name and the Email Address column with the assigned participant's email address
  4. Save the file in CSV format. Ignore any warnings about data loss.