Create and manage breakout rooms

Meetup1 offers Breakout Rooms as an additional tool for student engagement. These rooms allow for small group discussions, collaboration, and cooperation among students.

Moderators have the ability to create and manage breakout rooms during their live Meetup1 sessions.

To Create Breakout Rooms: When setting up breakout rooms, only viewers who have successfully joined the Meetup1 session can be assigned to a room. All connected participants will appear in the users list within the interface.

Moderators can create breakout rooms via the users list Cog Wheel 

Breakout rooms can be configured in various ways to support different discussion formats and group sizes:

• Number of rooms [1]: By default, the minimum number of breakout rooms is set to 2. You can select the desired number of rooms from the dropdown menu, with a maximum of 24 rooms.
• Allow users to choose a breakout room to join [2]: When this option is selected, viewers will be prompted with a dropdown list of available breakout rooms, allowing them to choose which room to join. (See Below)

Duration (minutes) [3]: Once the specified duration is reached, all breakout rooms will automatically close, and users will be returned to the main meeting room.

Randomly assign [4]: When selected, the Meetup1 interface will randomly assign viewers to rooms based on the number of rooms and users, ensuring an even distribution across all rooms.

Not assigned [5]: Users who have not been assigned to a breakout room will appear in this section. It’s important to note that moderators cannot join breakout rooms through the breakout room creation panel.

Created Rooms [6]: The breakout rooms that have been created will appear, along with the users assigned to each room.

Once the breakout rooms are configured, click Create to launch them.

Viewers will receive a prompt to join their assigned breakout room. All users assigned to a room will be removed from the audio in the main meeting room and will be prompted to join their respective breakout room.

Upon joining the breakout room, viewers will see the current slide from the main room. Navigation arrows for slide changes will be disabled, as only the current slide from the main room is available in the breakout room.

To Invite Late Joiners:
Instructors can use the gear icon to select Breakout room invitation and invite any students who are not currently in a breakout room to join.

To Manage Breakout Rooms:
Once the breakout rooms are created and viewers have joined, moderators can manage and join the rooms directly from the main Meetup1 meeting using the Breakout Room Control panel.

The moderator’s Breakout Room Control panel will appear above the messages section, to the left of the users list in the Meetup1 interface. Click to expand and view the panel.

The breakout room control panel will display all active breakout rooms, including the number and names of attendees in each room [1], along with additional settings and moderator options:

• Join room [2]: When selected, this option allows you to join a breakout room directly. The moderator’s audio will be disconnected from the main meeting room, and a prompt will appear to connect audio in the selected breakout room.

If you do not wish to join the audio in the breakout room, click the “X” in the audio chooser when prompted.

As the moderator, you can open any number of breakout rooms using the join function. Each additional breakout room will appear as a tab at the top of your browser window.

• Join audio [3]: When selected, this allows you to listen in on the chosen breakout room. Note that this does not prompt you to join the room directly.

• Return audio: Select this option to return to the main room.
• Duration time [4]: Displays the remaining time for the breakout rooms.
• End all breakout rooms [5]: When selected, this will close all breakout rooms before the duration time ends. All users will be removed from their assigned breakout rooms and returned to the main room to rejoin the audio.

Important Notes and Recommendations:

• All viewers enter the breakout rooms with moderator status, and the first person to connect is assigned the presenter role. We recommend designating one individual per room as the “breakout captain,” responsible for uploading content or passing the presenter role during discussions.
• Currently, breakout rooms cannot be recorded.
• Content from the breakout rooms cannot be transferred to the main room.
• Once breakout rooms are created and started, the duration cannot be extended.