How to use Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

Follow these instructions to use Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams.

Setting up breakout rooms during your Teams class meetings allows for small group discussions and collaboration. Breakout rooms give students time to critically evaluate, and you can drop into the breakout rooms to offer support and answer questions. Set out a clear plan, time frame, and instructions for the students before initiating the breakout rooms. The LX resource on managing Zoom breakout rooms provides guidance that is also relevant for planning and running breakout rooms in Teams.

The following instructions provide a workaround solution for using breakout rooms in Teams while Microsoft are working on releasing a dedicated breakout rooms feature. Take a look at the Samuel McNeill blog post on creating breakout rooms in Teams for a video walkthrough.

1. Before your scheduled Teams meeting time, create a new channel for Breakout Rooms. Select the three dots to the right of your class name and select ‘Add channel’ from the menu. If you want to keep each breakout group private for those participants only, create a separate channel for each breakout group.

2. Start your scheduled Teams meeting.

3. When you are ready to start the breakout rooms and have provided instructions on breakout room activities, inform students of which break out group they should join. Then select ‘Teams’ on the left navigation menu.

4. Select your Breakout Rooms channel. You will still be present in the main meeting, which will appear in the top left corner of the Teams window.

5. Select the ‘Meet Now’ icon on the bottom menu.

6. Enter the title of the breakout group. Select ‘Meet now’. You will enter the breakout room and be placed ‘on hold’ in the main meeting.

7. Repeat steps 3-6 to create additional breakout rooms.

8. Students can join the relevant breakout room by navigating to the breakout rooms channel and selecting ‘Join’ for the relevant breakout room. Select the dropdown menu in the top right of the window to view and join meetings that may not be immediately visible under the posts tab.

9. To re-enter the main meeting or another breakout meeting, select the play icon from the box in the top left of the screen. Select the phone icon to end the breakout room meeting and bring students back into the main meeting.

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