Overview
This guide goes over some common issues that come up when using Zoom breakout rooms at USC, and our suggested solutions.
Creating breakout rooms
Pre-assigning breakout rooms before your Zoom meeting
Creating breakout rooms on the fly
A note about pre-assigned vs automatically assigned breakout rooms
It is not currently possible to combine pre-assignments with the automatic (random) assignment function in Zoom. Thus, if you pre-assign participants to breakout rooms before the Zoom meeting begins, once the Zoom meeting is in progress you will not be presented with the option to randomly assign participants to breakout rooms.
A note about host vs co-host controls with breakout rooms
Only the host can use the breakout room pre-assignment and manual assignment functions.
Hosts and co-hosts can both move freely between breakout rooms. Co-hosts, however, must first be assigned by a host to a breakout room, and must join that initial breakout room before the co-hosts can then move freely between breakout rooms.
Troubleshooting breakout rooms
Why can't my TA/co-host assign breakout rooms for me?
Before the meeting
Only the meeting creator can edit the meeting to pre-assign attendees to breakout rooms, whether creating manual assignments or uploading a CSV file. If you want your TA to be the host for the meeting and pre-assign attendees for you, follow ITS's instructions to "Reassign Zoom Session to New Host" and then have your TA edit the new meeting to pre-assign attendees.
During the meeting
Only the meeting host can use the breakout room assignment functions. If the meeting has already started and you want to make your TA the host, click on End and select Leave rather than "End meeting for all." You will be give the option to assign your TA as the new host and sign out. Then, sign back into the meeting and make sure your TA, now the meeting host, assigns you to the role of "Co-host."
I pre-assigned my students to breakout rooms, so why, during the meeting, is my list of breakout rooms appearing empty/not everyone who's in the meeting shows up in my list?
Do not click on the Breakout Rooms icon until your students are all in the Zoom meeting. The pre-assignment automatically activates only once. If you first clicked on Breakout Rooms before everyone has arrived, then you must manually recover your pre-assignments when you're ready to open the breakout rooms.
To revert to your pre-assigned breakout rooms: once everyone has joined the Zoom meeting, click on Breakout Rooms. In the bottom left corner of the panel, click on Recreate and select Recover to pre-assigned rooms.
Why are only some of my students being correctly pre-assigned to their breakout rooms?
If only some students are being correctly assigned and others are not, even when you wait until everyone's in the meeting before you clicked on Breakout Rooms, the most likely cause is that the students not being assigned were not signed into your Zoom meeting with the USC Zoom accounts. If you had to manually admit the student from the waiting room to your class, then they were not signed into their USC Zoom account prior to joining the meeting.
To proactively prevent this, instruct your students to open the Zoom application on their computer and make sure they're signed into their USC Zoom account before they click on your Zoom meeting link in Blackboard.
How does recording work in breakout rooms?
Only the main Zoom meeting room can be recorded to the cloud. Breakout rooms can only be recorded locally, and if you do decide to give a student or TA the ability to record the breakout room that they're currently in, you should grant them recording permissions before you open the breakout rooms.