Feedback collected regarding main and breakout rooms

[annajiat]

Learners’ experience in the main room:

• if the zoom-host joins any breakout room to check the progress, then others (instructors, helpers, learners) from the main room might not be able to go to breakout rooms or go back to the breakout room after getting disconnected.
• learners waiting to be admitted might also get stuck if there are no co-hosts.
• when the host leaves zoom in the middle of the workshop or more commonly during follow up discussions at the end of the day, it closes the meeting unexpectedly. Rejoining may not be intuitive to the participants.

Recommendation:

• always staying (host) in the main room or transferring host-role before moving around

Learners' experience before moving to breakout-room:

• sometimes learners cannot self-join any breakout room
• learners wait to be assigned
• people are unsure which breakout room to join

Recommendations:

• creating Operating System (OS) specific breakout rooms e.g., breakout rooms for Windows, Linux, MacOS so all setup issues are handled at a specific level Vs general breakout room for help. Similarly for exercises, having the same OS for the participants in the same room might be more convenient
• creating self-join breakout rooms
• reminding learners to ask for help and move to one-on-one breakout or a room with multiple participants

Learners' Experience while moving to breakout-room:

• as soon as breakout rooms are opened, some learners may start joining without waiting for announcements or before the announcements finish
• learners in a breakout room may be unsure about when to return to the main room
• learners may be confused about the task
• some learners missing their breakout room prompts

Recommendation:

• announcing the tasks, expected duration, and how to come back to the main room BEFORE opening breakout rooms

Learners' experience in breakout rooms:

• learners may be confused about the task and need help
• learners may use the zoom-chat to send message to the main room from the breakout room without realizing the chat stays within the breakout room even though previous chats from the main room are still visible causing a confusion
• too short notice (~60s) before closing breakout-room
• rejoining meetings afterwards may not be intuitive

Recommendations:

• assigning one observer per breakout room e.g., helper, instructor or mixing learners with varying level of backgrounds
• reminding not to mix up between leave meeting vs leave breakout-room
• announcing 3 to 5 mins before closing breakout-rooms

Observed breakout room related practices:

• creating/moving to/coming out of breakout rooms take time
• learner in breakout room missing main workshop materials

Recommendations/practices:

• some workshops tend to avoid breakout rooms and discuss briefly in the main room
• some workshops tend to utilize longer consolidated breakout: instructor demonstrates for sufficient duration and then learners go to the breakout room for a somewhat long time where learners practice extensively to gain confidence. Less materials may be covered but it may be very effective for online learning.
• some workshops tried: 1.5-hour lesson and 1.5-hour lesson without any major issues. Seemed ideal for break as well as practice and potentially avoids zoom fatigue
• some workshops are avoiding breakout rooms altogether because of overhead of moving in and out and breakout room management

Screen sharing in breakout rooms

• screen sharing may not be possible in one or more breakout rooms

Recommendations:

• closing and reopening all breakout rooms might solve this issue
• enabling screen sharing before creating breakout rooms might help

[maneesha]

I see this was assigned to me. Is there anything specific needed from me now?