Breakout rooms are now available in Microsoft Teams

Breakout rooms within Teams allow the organiser of the meeting to divide the meeting into sub-groups to encourage discussions, a great tool for hybrid teaching! 

The meeting organiser can create up to 50 breakout rooms and can automatically or manually assign participants to the rooms. They can also allow participants to come back into the main meeting at any time via the settings. This can be perfect for group work, as you can separate your class into breakout groups to discuss a topic, but they still have the opportunity to come back to you to ask any questions in the main meeting space. The meeting organiser/tutor can join any of the breakout rooms at any time in order to supervise discussion.  

All the same features that are available in the main meeting space are also available in breakout rooms, such as together mode and whiteboard to share notes and ideas. Any content that is created within the breakout room can be made available in the main meeting space, meaning that each individual group can present their ideas to the class.  

For more information on breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams, try the following links: 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/breakout-rooms-generally-available-today-in-microsoft-teams/ba-p/1968481 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-and-manage-breakout-rooms-during-class-meetings-18b340cd-1106-4fa5-a852-5676614f7e7d?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6PL_Y48tRg&feature=youtu.be 

 

Please note: you must have the most up to date version of Microsoft Teams to be able to access these features.  

If you require any further assistance, please contact eLearning@tees.ac.uk