Breakout Room functionality is now available on Microsoft Teams, but there are a few caveats to consider!
Before Breakout Room functionality was available via Teams, we were suggesting a few alternatives such as using Channels or creating separate Teams meetings. You can still use these methods if you are comfortable with them, and due to restrictions in how current Breakout Room functionality works, this might be your only option at the moment. See the original blog post for Updated method for Creating breakout rooms in MS Teams.
For consistency, you can check out the instructions on how to use Breakout Rooms on the University Guide Pages; https://www.kent.ac.uk/guides/teams-for-staff#meetings-and-seminars
Some things to be careful of!
- You can only use breakout rooms in a standalone meeting, the option isn’t available for Teams meetings created in Channels.
- Only the meeting organiser can create breakout rooms and allocate people to them.
- Due to permissions needed so that only the Organiser can present by default, regardless of the Meeting Settings, people in the breakout room won’t have the Presenter Role, and therefore can’t share their screen. You’ll need to enter each room yourself and change that rooms options (this is explained in the link above).
- Be careful if wanting to take attendance. You’ll want to download the attendance report before you send people off to the breakout rooms.
- Keep in mind that this is still a new feature and is likely to be developed over time. The University Guides pages will be updated when new functionality is made available.