How to Create Zoom Breakout Rooms Based on Poll Responses

Create Zoom Breakout Rooms Based on Poll Responses

Breakout rooms can be an effective way to promote discussion and collaboration in Zoom meetings. Instead of assigning groups randomly, use a polling question to gather input and group individuals based on their responses. This approach creates breakout rooms that feel intentional and relevant - tailored to participants' needs or interests. 

This feature can speed up the breakout room assignment process for the host. Hosts can also set a limit for how many participants are placed in each breakout room and move or exchange participants after launching the breakout rooms. 

Notables:

• This feature only applies to single choice polling questions
• Require answers to be anonymous must be disabled

Here's how to create breakout rooms based on poll responses:

Set up poll with the option to create breakout rooms

1. Sign into zoom.umn.edu
2. Create a new meeting and click Save or edit an existing meeting
3. Click the Polls/Quizzes tab at the top
4. Click Create. Change the title and enter your single choice polling question.
5. Click the Create Breakout Rooms toggle 

Launch the breakout rooms from the poll responses

1. In your meeting, launch the poll
2. When participants have answered, click End Poll
3. Click Create Breakout Rooms. This will open up the breakout rooms feature to allow the host to (optionally) decide how many participants you want in each breakout room. You can manually move participants around after you create the rooms.
4. Click Create
5. Click Open All Rooms

Additional resources:

• Conducting polls in Zoom meetings
• How to use meeting breakout rooms

Article by Karen Matthes, Extension Learning Technologies, klm@umn.edu