Automating Breakout rooms in Zoom

 Keeping the class on schedule in a Zoom meeting is often a difficult task, especially when the class involves group activities conducted in breakout rooms. Initiating the breakout rooms takes time, students don’t always enter the room when prompted, and maintaining time limits can be complicated, with stragglers returning to the main meeting at different times.

You can automate some of the process, thereby saving time and keeping the class on schedule. 

Here’s how (note this example uses Zoom version 5.3):

To assign students randomly to breakout rooms:

Click the “Breakout Rooms” icon in the menu bar at the bottom of the Zoom window to call up the settings for the rooms:

In the settings window, select the number of rooms you need, select the radio button to “assign automatically” and the students will be evenly distributed among the rooms:

Click the “Create” button in this window to create the rooms. Do not “Open All Rooms” yet!

To automate the process of entering and exiting the rooms, click the Options button at the bottom left of the Breakout Rooms window (as of Version 5.3 this button looks like a cog): 

The window that pops up provides the method for automatically opening and closing the rooms:

Check “Automatically move all assigned participants into breakout rooms” (A). When you Open All Rooms, the students will automatically enter the breakout rooms. They don’t hesitate to join the rooms and can begin work at once.

You can set the number of minutes you want to keep the rooms open (B). This is useful if you have a short task and you let students know how long they have to complete the task. If you select the option to “Notify me…” you then have the option to override the automatic closing of the rooms. Leaving it unchecked initiates the closing process.

Participants in the breakout rooms will see a countdown timer indicating how much time is left to complete the task.

If you leave the “Countdown after closing breakout room” ( C) unchecked, the rooms will automatically close as soon as the time set in (B) above is up. It might be a good idea to give the students a few seconds to wrap up, so if you check the box (C ) you can determine how many seconds remain after the closing sequence is initiated before the room closes and the students are returned to the main meeting. 

The most automatic process would involve selecting A and B in this window, determining how many minutes the breakout session will last, and leaving C unselected. This process might help keep the class plan on track.