{"id":474,"date":"2022-02-21T20:27:55","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T19:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.catedu.es\/zgzsur\/?p=474"},"modified":"2022-02-21T20:27:55","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T19:27:55","slug":"managing-breakout-rooms-in-online-tutorials-and-workshops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.catedu.es\/zgzsur\/managing-breakout-rooms-in-online-tutorials-and-workshops\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing Breakout Rooms in online Tutorials and Workshops"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Twittear<\/a><\/div>\n

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Managing Breakout Rooms in online Tutorials and Workshops<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Over the last two years I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve done online, and when I share this method with colleagues they tell me they\u2019re going to borrow it \u2013 so I thought I would write it up in case you are also still managing group work in online tutorials and workshops.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Step 1: Set the context<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I don\u2019t make my students have cameras on (you\u2019re making a lot of assumptions about people\u2019s 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\u2019t for everyone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Step 2: Giving students control<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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\u2019s say I have a group of 20 to keep numbers manageable. I set up 5 breakout rooms and tell students the following:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n