Tip Sheet: Creating Pre-assigned Zoom Breakout rooms

If you know which groups you would like to break your students into prior to your Zoom session, you can set groups for Breakout Rooms prior to the session. This can be done either through the Zoom webportal (georgetown.zoom.us) or by using a spreadsheet (.csv document).  

Please note that after pre-assigning breakout groups, you may still need to manually sort participants while you are in the session. This happens when participants are not signed in to zoom before joining, or else if they are not affiliated with Georgetown. 

Following are instructions and links on how to:

  1. Enable pre-assigned breakout rooms
  2. Create pre-assigned breakout rooms
  3. Use breakout rooms during a meeting

Enabling pre-assigned breakout rooms

  1. Create a new Zoom meeting if you haven’t already.
    • There are many ways to create a Zoom meeting. You can learn more about creating a Zoom meeting through the Georgetown Zoom website by visiting the official Zoom documentation here.
    • You can also create Zoom meetings within Canvas, which you can learn more about from the official Zoom documentation here.
  2. Log-in to georgetown.zoom.us. 
  3. Go to Settings 
  4. Ensure that “Breakout room” is enabled under “In Meeting (Advanced),” illustrated below with the blue and white button..
  5. Click on “Allow host to assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling”, as shown below with the blue and white checkbox. 

Creating pre-assigned breakout rooms

You have two different options for creating pre-assigned breakout groups. You can create a pre-assigned breakout room by (A) using the web portal to create them directly in your web browser or (B) by using a spreadsheet (.csv file) to organize rooms with email addresses, and then uploading that spreadsheet to the meeting settings. 

Click on the links below to see step-by-step instructions for each method.

  1. One option for creating pre-assigned breakout groups is to manually create and organize groups while logged in to the Georgetown Zoom website. Find step-by-step instructions from Zoom here. 

You can also edit the groups that you have created. Click here for detailed instructions from the official Zoom website.

Breakout rooms during a meeting

Once you have created the pre-assigned breakout groups, those groups will be ready to go whenever you are ready during your class session. For more instructions on how to initiate the breakout groups you have previously created, visit the official zoom instructions here. 

Zoom also allows you to revert back to pre-assigned breakout groups. This is helpful if a student joined the meeting after you have started the breakout groups, or if you had more than one set of breakout groups.

Note: If students are not logged in to Zoom before joining your zoom session, you may still need to manually assign them to a group before opening the rooms. This might also be the case for external guests who do not have a georgetown Net ID. 

Check out this documentation for managing breakout groups for help managing breakout groups when you are already in the session.