Using Zoom Breakout Rooms for Office Hours

• Create a Zoom meeting with your preferred settings and scheduled times

• If you scroll down the meeting settings you can set the Participants video to “Off” and set “Mute participants on entry” to keep the participants from seeing or talking to each other

• After your meeting has begun, click on "Breakout Rooms" on the bottom toolbar of your Zoom meeting
• It is recommended that you use one room for simplicity and make sure to have “Manually” selected

• After clicking “Create Rooms”, click on “Assign” and choose the student you want to meet with into Breakout Room 1

• When you have completed a session with a student in the breakout room, ask the student to click “Leave Breakout Room” on their bottom Zoom toolbar. They will be presented with the option to either “Leave Meeting” if they have no further questions, or “Return to Main Session” if they need additional assistance later in the Office Hours session 

• Once you are finished with the student in the breakout room and you leave, “Recreate” the breakout room. This will keep the previous student from being assigned to Breakout room 1 so that if they return to the main session, they can’t get back into Breakout room 1 without you assigning them there

• Hover over the next student you want to meet with and ‘Move to’ your new Breakout room 1 and repeat as necessary

Important Tip:

• Schedule your office hours in Canvas. Here is a link to information on Scheduling Class and Office Hours.  By scheduling a recurring office hour session in Canvas, you make it easier for students to know when and where to access them.  NOTE: If you have many shared sections that are not merged in Canvas scheduling in Canvas may not work.  In these cases, you may have to post a link to your Zoom meeting but consider whether or not a Canvas merge could solve your problem.  

  • NOTE: If you have a single set of office hours that all your separate courses or Canvas sections come to, this may not be possible and in this case, you'll need to share your personal meeting room link. 

Still, need help? 

For McCombs faculty, please contact Media Services via email or phone:

• Email ZoomHelp@mccombs.utexas.edu
• Call 512-232-6679 (GSB/CBA) and 512-232-4646 (RRH)

For all other UT faculty, please contact your respective college or school