Google Meet Breakout Rooms
There is such an importance in students collaborating together on an assignment. It provides them with leadership, responsibilities, as well as a chance to ask for help from their own peers. That has been near impossible to experience in distance learning without the use of breakout rooms. Now, my district wants us using Google Meet, which does not have a breakout room feature like Zoom. My district also doesn’t want us using certain extensions, which I also don’t mind because it's a hassle getting all students to download it themselves. So, I decided to create my own breakout rooms in Google Meet.
To make breakout rooms in Google Meet, you need to make individual Google Meets with codes for students to enter. I decided to start out with nine groups of three to four students in each group. For now, I’m placing them in their groups and will attempt to let them pick their own in the future.
To be ready for this adventure, I made a table with student names and their corresponding code as one of my presentation slides. I also had those Google Meets opened in separate tabs so students could enter them. I did ask students to stay in our main Google Meet as well so I could communicate with those who never made it to their small group. I went over instructions on what assignment was to be completed while we were together in the whole group before sending students off to work together.
I would check in with each group throughout the lesson to make sure students were on task and to see if students needed any help. It was fun to see some personalities come alive in a small group setting that I hadn’t seen during our whole group sessions. I allowed students to explore what worked and what didn’t work. Some groups successfully had a leader share their screen to work on the assignment together. Others struggled with figuring out the echo from having two Google Meets open and sharing their screen, making it three (presenter should be on mute to prevent this). Some groups had the natural one student doing the work and others with their camera off, so I was able to work with those groups to collaborate together.
Surprisingly, this went better than I expected it to. The main issue I came across was the noise. When I wanted to unmute to talk to a group, they could hear all the other students talking in their Google Meets. Thankfully, my co-teacher told me about the “Mute Tab” Google extension that mutes whatever tab you want. When we did the breakout rooms again the next day, it worked like magic! I was able to mute all tabs and then unmute the one that I wanted to work with students. So good!
This may have taken a lot of preparation on my part, but it was worth it to see how excited students were to work together. It was a digital version of watching students work in their table groups, which is one of my favorite things. Although I can’t wait for Google Meet to embed its own breakout room feature to make my life easier, I don’t mind making however many Google Meets I need for students to work on their collaboration skills. Next, I will try making enough for partners or groups of three (I have 29 students), which means more codes!
Written by Co-Author Madalyn Bradburn