Breakout Rooms
How and why I use them in my synchronous virtual classes.
Because my courses are focused on active learning and I limit my lectures to 20 minutes or less, I had to come up with a way to incorporate discussions into my online class platform. Enter Breakout rooms.
Set-Up
NewRow Smart Rooms is the platform I utilize for my courses and their breakout function is fab. Other platforms have breakout rooms as well.
I use the randomize feature most of the time, especially if they only have a question or two to discuss. Otherwise, I split them up alphabetically so I can keep track of who is in what room more easily. This also helps if you want to use the same groups from week to week or for group projects.
I give them instructions for what they are meant to do before I send them off. Then, I drop into each room and retell the instructions. I also post it on the whiteboard of each room.
It also helps to ask them to identify someone to “take the lead” and/or assign someone to do that while they are in the room.
The biggest improvement to my breakout room setup has come in by creating collaborative documents. I got the idea from this great pamphlet: Special Report on Online Teaching Strategies: Transform Your Students’ Online Learning Environment with Resources, Apps, and Games. Ahead of time, I figure out how many groups I want and what the activity/discussion questions are. I make as many documents as rooms, put instructions in each document, then give the link to each respective room to the share document (I use an MS365 Word document as our students have free access to them). That way, I can check their progress in real time and don’t have to mess with them trying to email me anything, or a lag in the chat pod, or complications with them trying to share screens.
Finally, set a timer. You can always add to it, but when I would say “I’ll come check on you and see how we are doing on time” does not work well in the virtual environment. As my classes only run about an hour, I find 10-15 minutes per breakout is a good amount of time.
Discussions and Activities
Here are some ideas for breakout sessions:
A set of discussion questions based on the reading or lecture content
Application questions
A list of historical causes - ask them to rank
Virtual museum exhibit - each group finds an artefact to discuss
Simulations - give each room a historical dilemma and ask them to choose a side
Group project planning
Creative interpretations - make a meme, a slogan, a hashtag, etc. to summarize content
Debate prep
Discussions based on a short video
