How to Run a Breakout Room
This post gives an example of how to use the breakout room. Breakout rooms can go wrong and leave your participants lost and confused. This post gives very specific things you can do to ensure breakout rooms work for your meeting.
Last post we talked about when to use breakout rooms: In a large broadcast online meeting it’s good for presentations, large Q&A, round tables, panel discussions, all of which I’ve covered in-depth in the last round of posts. But when a group wants to have an organized discussion or to do an exercise it’s really a good idea to use the breakout room functionality in your online video conferencing software.
How to use breakout rooms:
Explain what a breakout is to your participants before using it. You might think it’s obvious, but it’s not. Explain both metaphorically and technically what a breakout room is.
Explain how to technically enter and leave the room.
Explain when the attendee should enter the room.
Explain when the attendee should leave the room.
Explain what the attendees will do inside the breakout room.
Explain how much time they will have to do the activity.
Explain what will happen after they leave the breakout room.
Let's look at an example:
Scenario: Training for my Toastmasters volunteers.
The overall type of meeting: broadcast with 50 people.
The purpose for the breakout room: This room will be for you to get into your regional groups to discuss your contest planning.
Group size: ~7 each
Number of breakouts: 7
How to enter: You will select the breakout room from the list based on your region number.
When to leave: After 20 minutes you will automatically be moved back into the main session.
What to do inside: Pick the dates and contest functionaries for your region.
How long: 20 minutes.
What will happen when you get back: One person will read out the plan for up to 2 minutes
How can they go wrong?
There are three ways that breakout rooms go wrong. Here’s a list of these problems and how to solve them:
People get in the room and realize they weren't actually paying any attention to the instructions. Fix: Send out a broadcast message to remind them of what they are doing and how long they should be doing it.
People lose track of time. Fix: Broadcast time updates occasionally with reminders of the current activity.
People forget what they are supposed to do when they get back into the main room. Fix: Remind them of the next activity and the time limits.
I hope these very specific tips on how to run breakouts make your next event engaging. Breakout rooms can be lots of fun when used correctly. Let me know how you’ve used them in the comments on Facebook or Linkedin.
