Preventing participants from leaving breakout rooms in Zoom
How to prevent participants leave the breakout room that they are assigned to.
This article covers: If someone leaves the Zoom breakout rooms, how to get them back
- Participants themselves coming back to their assigned rooms
- Options page for breakout room to prevent them leaving
- Other things you can do to remind the participants
In an event where a participant leaves an assigned breakout room, here are the solutions:
1. The participant themselves can come back. There is a join breakout room option (if they leave). When they click this, they auto-enter the room they were in. It is located (in most cases, depending on your application) on the far right of the zoom sessions - the 'more' (three dots ...) options.
2. You can prevent the participants from leaving a breakout room. To do this, when creating the breakout rooms there is an option button on the bottom that opens up more options. Make sure to uncheck 'Allow participants to return to main session' (which is typically checked) - See second option in the image below. This will not allow them to leave an assigned breakout room.
3. It is also good practice to tell your participants why these breakout rooms have been assigned and the value of breakout rooms - within a meeting, assignment, conference, etc. In a classroom, credit/points can be assigned to participation in breakout rooms. Breakout rooms can be essential for online learning where groups can come to an agreement for a presentation, group assignment, and more.
