For example, let’s say you’re running a virtual class on Google Meet and you want your students to split up into discussion groups to go through the previous lesson. In the Google Meet breakout rooms, you can temporarily divide your virtual meeting into smaller groups and do so with minimal effort. You can create breakout rooms anytime before or during a call, but there are some limitations.
Only the moderator of the meeting can create and control breakout rooms, and only on the desktop. However, participants on mobile devices can still enter breakout rooms after turning on the moderator. You also can’t record or live stream a breakout room.
Breakout rooms are only available for: G Suite Business, Workspace Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus, and Google Workspace for Education Plus.
Create breakout rooms during a meeting
- Host a new meeting in Google Meet.
- Press the “Activities” Click the button in the top right, then select “Breakout Rooms.”
- Choose how many breakout rooms to create (up to 100).
- Google Meet automatically sorts the participants into the rooms. You can also create each group manually by entering a participant’s name or dragging their icon into the room.
- click “Open spaces” switch to breakout rooms.
The moderators of the meeting can remove attendees, edit break room details, or add timers using call controls.
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How to end breakout rooms:
- click “Close room” to end all breakout rooms.
- Confirm that you are ready to end the breakout sessions. All rooms will close in 30 seconds and participants will be returned to the main meeting.
Create breakout rooms in Google Calendar
Some workspace users can also set up breakout rooms in advance through Google Calendar.
(Note: This feature is not available to G Suite Basic, Google Workspace Business Starter, or Google Workspace Education Fundamentals users.)
- Go to calendar.google.com and create a new event.
- click “Add Google Meet Video Conferencing.”
- Select the participants in the meeting.
- Then click on “Change conference settings.”
- Choose “Breakout rooms” from the left menu.
- Choose the number of breakout rooms and add participants. You can drag and drop the names or click “Shuffle” to randomly shuffle the groups into rooms.
- click “To save” wrap.
- You can activate your pre-made breakout rooms at any time once the meeting has started in Google Meet.
You can also add breakout rooms to an existing meeting in Google Calendar. Open the event and click “Edit event.” Go to Event Details> Change Conference Settings> Breakout Rooms.
[9to5Google]
