Zoom: Enable and Use Self-Select Breakout Rooms

This article covers enabling and utilizing Zoom’s self-select breakout room feature. This feature enables participants to select which breakout room they’d like to move to, allowing them to choose their own group for breakout discussions or assignments. This will also allow users who temporarily lose connection to a Zoom meeting to quickly re-join their breakout room, without intervention from the host.

Self-Select Breakout Usefulness

Two common scenarios for which self-selecting breakout rooms could be useful:

• A class in which there are a large number of participants (greater than 200, which is the limit for .csv pre-assignments) and it’s not practical to assign students to breakout rooms once the meeting has started. Students could be told via email, Sakai, during a class, etc. that they will be in Group X, and would then know to enter the corresponding breakout room once the rooms are opened. This eliminates the need for instructors and/or instructional assistants to take steps within Zoom to assign students to a particular group.

• A conference in which participants will have their choice of joining a number of different breakout sessions, eliminating the need for the event’s host to keep track of which participants expressed interest in attending specific breakout sessions.

Enabling Self-Select Breakout Rooms as Host

Begin your meeting, and select Breakout Rooms from the bottom of the meeting menu. On the pop up window, enter your desired number of breakout rooms, and select Let participants choose room and then press the Create button.

Next, select Options and adjust any settings as needed, ensuring Allow participants to choose room remains checked. 

Then, if needed, rename the breakout rooms to help participants discern which rooms they’d like to move to, by hovering over the room name and selecting Rename.

Then, press Open all rooms. Participants will now have the ability to select the breakout room to which they’d like to go. Once you are ready for breakout rooms to close, select Close All Rooms and the breakout rooms will end according to your settings choices earlier.

Self-Selecting Breakout Room as a Particpant

Wait for the host to open the breakout rooms. Once they have opened the rooms, select the Breakout Rooms icon on the bottom menu, and select Join on whichever room you’d like to join, followed by Yes.

Once you are ready to move back to the main meeting, select Leave Room in the lower right corner.