A small group of students is always an excellent choice for fruitful learning. Virtual breakout rooms are no less than any group, giving the students more chances to speak, choose, and present.
To make virtual learning easy, expressive, and enjoyable, say yes to the virtual breakout rooms. For the smooth functioning of the breakout room, you can follow easy steps. To know more about these mini virtual rooms, give a full read to the blog!
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What is a virtual breakout room, and how it is important for a virtual classroom?
Virtual breakout rooms mean dividing the classroom into smaller groups to understand better and learn. In this way, it promotes the individual participation of each student. There are also breakout rooms in traditional offline learning where the teachers often divide the students into small groups.
Often it is seen that in a virtual classroom, the teacher is giving long lectures, and each student doesn’t get enough chances to interact. Due to this reason, many of the teachers thought to include the virtual breakout classes and the virtual classroom comprising all students. This creates excitement in the student as they feel more empowered to express themselves in smaller groups. The teachers also find it easy to teach a smaller group and interact individually with everyone. It creates a profound learning impact on the students. Thus the students feel actively involved in the class.
As a teacher, you must explore every aspect of your students. Often, it is the teacher who is responsible for disclosing the hidden talent of the students. And this can only happen when the teacher personally knows each student, for which an ample amount of time needs to be spent on the individual student.
You can also assign different assignments to distinct groups and then have a group discussion to get to know about other things simultaneously. If fewer students are in the group, then there are more chances of interaction within the students, thereby building a healthy and robust relationship.
A track of each group’s performance can also be noted for better understanding. You can analyze each group’s activity and work more for the weaker students or groups. If required, extra classes can also be offered to such a group of students.
What measures to be taken for the smooth functioning of the breakout room?
Sometimes it becomes difficult to manage or handle the virtual breakout rooms. There may be a handful of such rooms’ functioning challenges, but all such challenges could be addressed well by following some easy steps. As the next virtual classroom session starts in some months, the school authorities need to be ready with the plans. By following the below-mentioned measures, you can have productive and fruitful learning with the best experience for the student as well. They are as follows:
- Specify all the expectations beforehand.
Being a student, there are specific rules that they need to follow for the smooth functioning of the class. Just like in a traditional offline style, the student needs to behave appropriately and keep quiet during the lectures. Similarly, the students also need to explain that decent behaviour is expected. For example, during the class, when the teacher explains the mics need to be muted for proper hearing, and secondly, if the student wants to ask a question, they need to raise their hand and ask for permission. All these instructions must be provided to students in the beginning only for a break-free class. The students must be provided with regular tasks. This will not only keep them engaged but updated with the recent research. For each job, send along a right note or video of explicit instruction so that the student may not find it challenging to complete, and you may also not expect any problem or mistakes at the time of submission.
- Let the students express more.
Letting students express themselves entirely can turn a boring class into a productive one. Engage them in several exciting questions to become curious to know the answers. For better and more engagement in the breakout room, ask the students to present such views, which gives better collaboration. In this way, both the students and the teacher are benefitted. The students spend time thinking about the ways, and when presented, the teachers can use those views to increase more engagement in the class. This is just one way to express that the teachers can use several other ways to let the student reflect on themselves.
- Make use of the latest tools for more response.
The latest developed tools prove to be quite helpful in boosting the strength of the class. In a breakout room, using additional tools like Google jam board can help students understand better with much more interest. Several other tools are also available, which allows the students to have hassle-free usage. The technical problem is a significant cause that students face while studying online, so when they get the advantage of such tools, which makes their user experience good, they can pay more attention to their studies. Such tools also let the students and the teachers have a real-time experience as it enhances the functions of the particular platform much more straightforward.
- Say yes to personalized learning styles.
Often, students find it challenging to carry out the prescribed or common learning styles. This is normal as every student is different, and they all can have different learning styles. As a teacher, you need to encourage students to use personalized learning skills, apply them in their way of learning, and share them with other students. In this way, the students feel empowered and confident enough to apply creative skills in the right place. Other students can also get inspired by it and use it to learn. A positive and healthy environment in the breakout room is created, leading the students to have productive and fruitful learning.
Conclusion
The measures mentioned above may seem few, as there are various ways to be creative with your ideas and promote healthy learning. Breakout rooms prove to be helpful only when they are handled with care, as it requires regular management for smooth functioning.
Photo by Agung Pandit Wiguna from Pexels.
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