Many staff will be familiar with using break-out rooms in MS Teams, or at least being allocated to a break-out room. To make break-out rooms easier to manage in Teams you can also set a timer. When the timer is set, students or participants are returned from break-out rooms automatically, after an allocated time period that you can decide beforehand.  Using the timer means students clearly understand beforehand exactly how much time they have to complete their break-out room tasks. And to further assist students manage their time effectively, a time-remaining display is shown in each break-out room. Students are also provided with a warning when their time remaining begins to run out.

The problem

Some staff may not feel confident using break-out rooms that they can smoothly return the participants back to the main room at the end of a given task or time period.

Solution

When using breakout rooms in a Teams meeting you can easily set a timer. It returns all participants back to the main ‘room’ once the selected time period has elapsed.

STEP 1

When you are in your MS Teams meeting or teaching session, select Breakout rooms. Then select the Room settings icon:

STEP 2

Select Set a time limit option:

STEP 3

Select timer in minutes and/or hours from dropdown menus:

Once your timer has been set in this way, you can then launch the break-out rooms in the usual way whenever you wish.

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