Managing Breakout Rooms in online Tutorials and Workshops
Most of my teaching in 2020 and 2021 was done online. Like many people, I had to learn how to teach a lot of my face-to-face classes in online contexts. My institution used Zoom for this, and even in 2022 and beyond I will continue to teach some classes online. I think this is great. So many of my students used to have a horrific commute just to attend a single class, or would miss classes because of unavoidable commitments. Of course, there are many ways studying online is a terrible experience too. One particularly fraught online experience is classroom discussion. An experienced teacher can manage a classroom full of group discussions pretty effectively by moving around the room and keeping an eye and an ear on each group. Students usually feel sufficiently private at tables, but also have the buzz of the classroom to help the discussion along. Online classes take all of that away from everyone.
Over the last two years I’ve developed a way of managing breakout room that makes the best of a bad situation. My students regularly tell me my classes are some of the best they’ve done online, and when I share this method with colleagues they tell me they’re going to borrow it – so I thought I would write it up in case you are also still managing group work in online tutorials and workshops.
Step 1: Set the context
I don’t make my students have cameras on (you’re making a lot of assumptions about people’s access to technology and privacy for online study), but I explain to them the benefits of seeing colleagues faces. I also encourage students to use the chat box and to play around with the reaction button to help me calibrate to the mood of the room. If you get good at running an online classroom with multiple streams like this, you know some of the multitasking joy of doing live broadcast radio! But I l also get this isn’t for everyone.
Step 2: Giving students control
I let people select their own breakout group, which is an option in Zoom. I then explain how they should sort themselves out. The number of rooms I set up and how I assign them vary depending on the size of the class, but let’s say I have a group of 20 to keep numbers manageable. I set up 5 breakout rooms and tell students the following:
The final room is the quiet room: no one speaks, you just work through the activities in a companionable silence.
Rooms 3 and 4 are for groups of friends to move into. Start messaging them now to arrange to work together!
Rooms 1 and 2 are for people who want to meet new people or chat with a random group of people in the subject. Start with room 1 and when there are four people in there start room 2.
I work backwards to flag that I’m committed to supporting the most exhausted students and it’s not an afterthought, but also I like the last room being like the quiet space up the back of the library.
For people in rooms 1-4 the maximum is 4 people. Four is a good number for conversation – more than that and the conversation starts to fragment into smaller groups, which is hard to hold together in an online space.
Step 3: Running rooms
Online classes need much tighter guidelines and expectations than face-to-face classes, since it’s harder to change the flow of things. I make sure tasks are very clear and the time they’ll be in the rooms is also very clear to them. I also tell students I expect them to spend the first 2-3 minutes at least on small talk (not in the silent room!), online classes can really miss that human connection sometimes.
Sometimes we have to do a bit of on-the-fly juggling, if two groups vie for the same breakout room or there are more people in the quiet room than usual – but often students get the hang of this after a few weeks and get good at managing the breakout rooms themselves.
I also let students know that after 10 minutes I’ll come to each room to answer questions and check in, or they can ping me or return to the central room to ask questions too. Sometimes I’ll use something like Google Docs or Slides where I can see students adding content in real time, which gives me an idea of who might need more help or encouragement.
Why this set up?
This setup for breakout rooms gives students a little more control over their learning experience.
Some students are tired or find online classes incredibly stressful. I like providing them the chance to just get through the material, with a bit of solidarity and a central place I can check in with them.
Some students really miss the chance to sit at a table with their friends and catch up. I know I do!
Some students miss the chance to get to know new people at university. Some of the friends I made in undergraduate tutorials are still some of my closest friends today, I like to give my students some small chance of having that experience too.
The important thing I’ve noticed is: it’s not the same students in the same rooms each time. Some weeks even the most sociable students need a break, or sometimes your friends didn’t make it that week and you’re up for meeting someone new.
This is my default for running breakout rooms, but I do shake things up occasionally. I’ll randomly allocate students to breakout rooms for some tasks, telling them I’m intentionally shaking things up and giving them some icebreaker tasks. I usually only make groups of 3 in these weeks to give them more time to get to know each other.
Managing breakout rooms is one of those times where thinking like a has helped me improve my teaching. Thinking about breakout rooms as interactional spaces, and how we generally prefer to interact has helped me refine my classroom management.
If you have any success using–or refining(!)–this process, please let me know!
