Using Breakout Rooms to Break It Up: Lessons from an Intensive Summer French Class

When Brian Barnett (Director of Language Instruction in French) and Fidele Tchoffo Tsasse (Graduate Student in French) planned their intensive online Intermediate French class during a pandemic, they were faced with a challenge: keeping a relatively large group of students engaged and learning French for multiple hours of instruction, five days a week for five weeks.

Halfway through the course, the co-instructors divided the twenty students into two Zoom Breakout Rooms. Each room had to select a timekeeper, two note takers, and two spokespeople. The students discussed what was successful in the class, as well as their own out-of-class learning, and what they would recommend changing. While the students were in the Breakout Rooms, the co-instructors waited in the main Zoom room. Afterwards, the four spokespeople summarized their findings and shared them with the entire class and co-instructors.

Students offered many helpful insights about what helped them learn in class, like phonetics (hard, but useful!) and practice with writing and speaking. They also noted items that helped them outside of class, like engagement with media, homework, LearnSmart and TandemPlus. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of discussion about Zoom Breakout Rooms, since they are such an important tool for communication and speaking practice in an online synchronous class.

Here are some things to think about when forming Breakout Rooms effectively based on student comments in the focus groups as well as the co-instructors’ own experience:

• Purpose: What is the activity or task? Make sure this is clear to students so they know the purpose of their conversation. Either copy the task in the chat or share a link to a Google Doc that includes the task with the students. Students will not see your shared screen with instructions when they leave the main Zoom Room.
• Length: How much time is required to complete it? If too much time is allocated, students may become disengaged. Remember, you can end rooms manually or have them timed to end automatically.
• Frequency: For a long class, short, but frequent Breakout Rooms may be an effective way of breaking up the day.
• Participation: It can be frustrating to be in a pair or group with someone who is not participating. Mixing up the Breakout Rooms will help keep the groupings fresh. Instructors can also join rooms to try to draw out students who are less likely to speak.
• Target Language: Is speaking in the target language required? Make sure that is clear to everyone before they leave for the Breakout Rooms.
• Breaks, not just Breakout Rooms: Short and frequent breaks can help students reflect on what they have learned, and transition to the next topic.