How to Facilitate Powerful Breakout Rooms

Open door to breakout room

Virtual Events require a new twist on tried and true rules of facilitation and participant engagement. Today I want to talk about how we use Breakout Rooms to power up virtual events.

For right now, I want you to think of a virtual breakout room not like a traditional conference breakout room, but rather a table group within a live training or workshop.

Benefits of Small Group Discussion

Let’s start with why. Why are breakout rooms a good addition to your virtual event? Good instructional design requires a variety of engagement methods to accommodate a variety of learning styles AND to keep your attendees focused. Breakout rooms help you facilitate those small group discussions.

Table groups or breakout rooms are one great way to create intentional engagement. Here are a few ways you and your audience will benefit:

  1. Increased Interaction. Small groups feel safer. People are more apt to open up and talk when there is a small group of 4-5 people rather than a large room. In large groups, less confident or introverted attendees will yield to those in leadership and those more extraverted.
  2. Improved Buy-in. People do not argue with their own data. You can use breakout rooms as a way for small group brainstorming and problem solving. When you give attendees a chance to create their own solutions they are more likely to support the outcomes. This is a great way for organizations to create buy-in on new projects, programs and change.
  3. Increase Information Retention. When people engage more closely with the content they retain significantly more information. Brain science has shown that people learn best by doing and teaching others. Small group discussions create a way for individuals to interact with content in these ways, resulting in long-term memory storage.

Give Good Instructions

Commit yourself to giving great instructions. It will be the difference between an effective breakout activity and a waste of time.

Have you ever participated in an event where you were placed into a breakout room with a group of people. You arrive. Silence. Then someone speaks up and say, “So, what were we supposed to do?”

Good instructions are art and science. They need to be well thought out and practiced. Yes, practice giving instructions. Giving good instructions is much harder than you think.

Here are 7 Steps To Clear Instructions:

  1. In a moment…
    • Let them know you are about to give instruction. This simple statement captures attention and the brain wants to know what’s next – what’s coming in a moment.
  2. Tell them the task they will be working on or questions they will be discussing.
  3. Tell them there will be a group leader and the role of the group leader. To take notes, make sure everyone gets a chance to contribute, keeps time, etc.
  4. Tell them how long they will have.
  5. Tell them who/how to determine who the group leader is.
  6. Ask “What questions do you have?”
  7. Open rooms.

Here is how this might sound:

In a moment I’m going to send you into breakout rooms. You will be in a room with 4 other people.

I’m going to ask you to answer the following question. Why is pizza better than tacos?

You will need a group leader and scribe to record the key ideas, keep track of time and make sure everyone in the group has a chance to contribute.

You will have 7 minutes to complete this activity.

The group leader is the person who is wearing the brightest color shirt.

What questions do you have?


Debrief Breakout Activities With Intent

Your debrief should do the following:

  • Bring context to the activity.
  • Allow you to highlight key learning points.
  • Tell you if you gave clear instructions.

Every activity that you ask participants to do should have a purpose or intent. Prepare 3-4 questions related to your intention for the breakout exercise. These questions should lead the discussion to your intended outcome.

Get Creative With Breakouts

Here are a few ways you can use breakout rooms to bring a welcome change to your virtual program.

  • Create competition: Send a challenge or question to all rooms using the broadcast message function. The first room to send their leader back to the main room with the correct answer gets a point. Then broadcast that there was a winner of that round and the correct answer. Continue through several rounds.
  • Present a slide or image prior to moving people into rooms. Ask attendees to take a picture of the information on the slide. These could be questions, a quiz, or a chunk of content, or scenario to be role-played. This allows you to share more content without having to provide handouts or downloaded materials.
  • Brainstorming. Present each group with a topic or challenge they will brainstorm solutions to. Have them create a list to share. Take a photo of the completed list and when they return to the main room have them share the picture in the chat window, or share screens.

What other ways are you using virtual breakout rooms to add engagement and variety to your online events. There are many more. And I’d love to hear how you are getting creative too.


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