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Live online teaching guide

Explore the options available for live online teaching.

About breakout room activities

This guide is hugely indebted to the Small Group Teaching Toolkit developed by City’s Dr Leonie Fleischmann.

A lot of the activities outlined on this guide require students to feedback to the main virtual classroom. If you have a large cohort of students with a lot of breakout rooms, this won’t be possible. Some ideas to adapt to this include:

  • Run a Poll using the inbuilt polling system or Poll Everywhere for open ended questions to get student feedback.
  • Use the wheel of names to randomly select which breakout rooms to feedback.

Breakout room outputs

It is important to have an output from Breakout Room activities. Dr Stefano Pagliari, Senior Lecturer in International Politics has developed some OneNote templates that you can use for students to structure and share their breakout room activities.

Screen sharing and annotation in Zoom

If using Zoom you need to allow participants to screen share and annotate from your in meeting security settings before you open the breakout rooms. Don't worry, you can amend the setting once the breakout room is open and the change will follow through to the breakout rooms. Once your breakout room activity is completed, you can remove permission from students to share screen and annotate.

Breakout room activities

  • Questions about the lecture: Set up breakout rooms with 2 students per room. Each student in the breakout room comes up with a question about the lecture and the other student provides an answer.
    • Students need access to microphone in order to ask and answer questions. No additional setup required in the breakout room.
    • To extend this activity the questions and answers can be added to a collaborative OneDrive file to be used as a shared module resource.
  • Introductions: Set up breakout rooms with up to 6 students per room.
    • Assign an observer/presenter.
    • Students need access to microphone in order to ask and answer questions. No additional setup required in the breakout room.
    • Provide the students in the breakout room with an opportunity to introduce themselves to help the group get to know each other. Ask students to outline one thing they are looking forward to about the module and one thing they are concerned about.
    • Observer/presenter summarises what the group is looking forward to and what they are concerned about in the main meeting room.
  • Ask a question/clarify: Sometimes students won’t ask questions in the main chat if there are lots of students in the main virtual classroom. Create breakout rooms (max 5 students) for students to ask each other questions and help one other.
    • To extend this activity, the questions and answers can be added to a collaborative OneDrive file to be used as a shared module resource.
  • Checkpoint questions to check students understanding: Lecturer provides the questions to be answered. Doing this in small groups (max 6) allows for different perspectives.
    • To extend this activity the questions and answers can be added to a collaborative OneDrive file to be used as a shared module resource.
  • Small group discussions following the introduction of a new topic in the lecture: To help facilitate this discussion, the lecturer might want to provide prompts to the students to help them to address the topic and keep the discussion on track. Put up to 8 students in breakout rooms.
    • Students need access to microphone in order to ask and answer questions. No additional setup required in the breakout room.
    • Depending on timing and size of the synchronous lecture, feedback can be presented from each group or via a Poll.
  • Production of a shared resource: Each breakout room can be assigned a different resource or a smaller part of a large resource to create. Set up breakout rooms with max 8 students per group. Provide each breakout room with access to an editable document to collaborate on.
    • Assign a presenter and notetaker for each of the breakout rooms.
    • The presenter shares their screen with the editable document.
    • The group provide feedback and suggestions, and this is added to the editable document by the notetaker.
    • Bring the breakout rooms back to the main room to present and discuss the resource.
  • Data analysis: Assign each of the breakout rooms a dataset to analyse. Set up breakout rooms with max 8 students per room.
    • Assign a presenter and notetaker.
    • The presenter shares their screen with the dataset open.
    • The notetaker takes notes.
    • Each group to report back to the main room.
    • Analysis to be placed on collaborative OneDrive document which can then be used as a module resource.
  • Paraphasing and summarising: Ideally, assign the texts to student prior the session so that they have read the articles. Assign each of the breakout rooms a key text to paraphrase and summarise to develop paraphrasing skills. Set up breakout rooms with max 5 students per room.
    • Assign a presenter and notetaker.
    • Students need access to microphone in order to ask and answer questions. No additional setup required in the breakout room.
    • The presenter shares their screen with the key text open.
    • The notetaker takes notes.
    • Each group to report back to the main room.
    • Summaries to be placed on collaborative OneDrive document which can then be used as a module resource.
  • Debates: This activity needs careful structure and planning. Provide preparation materials to students on Moodle. Split your class into For and Against groups and create these in Moodle. Set up a Group Forum to enabled students to come up with their arguments. Provide guidance and resources on how to structure the argument and how to participate in the debate when they move to the breakout rooms.
    • Create breakout rooms that combine a For and Against group. Each breakout room can debate a topic and present their conclusion back to the main room.
    • As you need specific students in each room, it is easier to use Zoom to facilitate this activity as you can pre-assign students to breakout rooms. If you have pre-assigned students to breakout rooms and they join after the activity has started, then will be joined to the main room and will need to be assigned to the relevant breakout room.
  • The Critical Box: Each breakout room produces either a For or Against statement.
    • Assign a notetaker and presenter.
    • Students need access to microphone in order to ask and answer questions. No additional setup required in the breakout room.
    • Each breakout room presents its arguments back to the main room.
    • Swap the arguments for the second part of the activity. The For groups critically evaluate the Against groups arguments and vice-versa.
  • Agree/Disagree: Share a statement on PDF with a for and against line. Assign up to 10 students in each breakout room.
    • Ask one student in each group to download an agree/disagree line from Moodle and to share this in the breakout room.
    • Ask one student to be responsible for downloading and saving the annotation.
    • Students to use annotation (their initials) to indicate where on the line they fall in terms of their agreement with the statement.
    • Ask students to save their annotations.
    • Annotations can be shared with the lecturer after the session for further discussion online.
  • Lecture recap: Each breakout room (max 5 students) to be tasked with providing a summary of a key topic during the lecture. This provides an opportunity for students to review their notes and test their understanding.
    • Each breakout room to be allocated a presenter and notetaker.
    • Students in presenter roles to present back their summary in the main room.
    • Topic summaries to be placed in a OneDrive document to be shared via Moodle as a learning resource by notetakers.
  • Assessment criteria: This activity is helpful to prompt students to think about what is required for an assessed piece of work and to get a better understanding of the assessment criteria. Create breakout rooms with max 6 students.
    • In advance of the lecture, ask students to review an assessed piece of work from the previous year. This could be made available on Moodle.
    • Provide each group with a editable form/document to record their grades per criteria.
    • Assign a presenter and notetaker for each of the breakout rooms.
    • The presenter shares the editable form/document.
    • The notetaker records the consensus on the grades per criteria.
    • Provide each breakout room with an old assessment and ask them to reach consensus on the marks per criteria
    • Each group to present back via the meeting room or respond to a Poll with their grading.
    • Large group discussion on the assessment criteria facilitated by the lecturer.
  • Solve a problem/question from an old exam script: Each breakout room (max 6 students) can work on a different question and report back.
    • Exam scripts can be shared via Moodle for students to download.
    • Assign a presenter and notetaker for each of the breakout rooms.
    • Provide a form or editable document for each of the breakout rooms to solve their problem. Additionally they can use annotation to mark up the script.
    • The presenter shares the exam script and reports back to the main room if required.
    • The notetaker takes notes.
  • Group projects: Assign students into breakout rooms based on their project groups. In Teams, the groups can be maintained over a series of recurrent meetings and you can pre-assign students to breakout rooms using Zoom.
    • students can prepare documentation and discuss the progress of a group project.

Related guidance

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