Tips for Breakout rooms success in online teaching

Very often, online teaching can make the teaching-learning one way where mostly teachers are speaking and students are passive learners. To make the learning more interactive and collaborative, breakout rooms can be a good option. However, the breakout rooms need to be managed well to ensure that they facilitate learning and not disrupt it. Some tips to improve the effectiveness of breakout rooms are:

• Do not make a sudden decision mid-class to use breakout rooms. Plan the lesson and activities in advance and set up the breakout rooms in advance.

• While planning the activities to be performed in a breakout room, keep in mind the time of activity and the nature of the activity. If you are allotting students to breakout rooms for 10 mins, plan approximately 8 min activity. You can also include some optional extra activities to support students who complete their work early.

• Provide clear instructions and all necessary tools (e.g., post-its, link to Google doc, discussion questions, etc.) to students to complete the activity.

• Do not exceed the number of students more than 3 to 5 students per group in each breakout room, and ensure that each student has a task to complete.

• Make consistent surprise visits to each breakout room to observe the activity and facilitate students.