KB1358 - Using Breakout Rooms in Teams

Using Breakout Rooms in Teams allows you to sub-divide and organize large meetings or online classes into smaller groups.

Breakout Rooms can help to encourage active participation, foster focused discussions, and improve collaboration between participants. Instructors can assign students to work in pairs or small groups, to do role plays, debates, or dialogues using Breakout rooms. They can return to the main meeting again after the breakout activity has completed.

Many online meeting platforms provide a feature like Breakout Rooms (e.g. Teams, Zoom, BigBlueButton, etc.)

Using and Recording Breakout Rooms

Microsoft provides this help with configuring Breakout Rooms in Teams:

• Breakout rooms troubleshooting guide in Microsoft Teams

In the following free online course, you'll find a step-by-step demonstration of breakout rooms in Chapter 5, in the lesson titled "Use breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams".

• Microsoft Teams Essential Training (LinkedIn course, VCC login required)
  An excellent overview and guide to getting started with Teams. (3-4 hours to complete.)

When Breakout rooms are created in a Teams channel, each room allows video recording. Each group can record within their own breakout room. When the breakout room session ends (or when the recording in the room gets turned off), the individual breakout room recordings will be stored in the Meeting Host's OneDrive "Recordings" folder.

(See the "Related Articles" section on the right of this page to see more eLSupport articles related to this topic.)

Other Resources:

• Google's AI Summary: "why use breakout rooms in online meetings"
• Read Microsoft's extensive information on how to manage breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams.
• Microsoft Learn Educator Center: Teams for Education