Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms let you split one video conference into separate private rooms, which maps naturally onto a remote exam session:
- Main room: the lobby. Applicants arrive here, are greeted, and wait their turn.
- One breakout room per applicant under exam: the applicant plus the three VEs observing them. Audio, video, and chat in a breakout room are private to that room, so multiple applicants can test simultaneously without disturbing each other.
- A spare room is handy for private ID verification or VE-only discussion.
Both Zoom and Google Meet support breakout rooms, but they behave differently in ways that matter for an exam session. Details for each platform are below.
Zoom
Zoom's breakout rooms are the more capable of the two: rooms can be pre-built before the meeting, participants can be locked into their rooms, and hosts can broadcast to every room at once. See Zoom's Managing meeting breakout rooms for the full reference.
Before the meeting
Breakout rooms must be enabled for your account before they appear in a meeting. In the Zoom web portal (not the desktop app), go to Settings → Meeting → In Meeting (Advanced) and confirm Meeting breakout rooms is on. Enable the Assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling sub-option if you want to pre-build rooms.
With that enabled, you can pre-assign rooms while scheduling the meeting: check Breakout Room pre-assign in the meeting options, then either build rooms in the web portal (add participants by email) or import a CSV using Zoom's template. Limits are 100 rooms and 1,000 pre-assigned participants.
Pre-assignment only works for signed-in Zoom users
A pre-assignment only takes effect if the participant joins signed in to the Zoom account matching the email you pre-assigned. Applicants frequently join from a bare meeting link without a Zoom account, so their pre-assignment silently fails and they land in the main room. Pre-assignments are also only applied the first time rooms are opened.
The reliable pattern: pre-assign only your VEs (who can be told to sign in), and drag applicants into rooms manually during the session.
During the meeting
- Click Breakout Rooms in the meeting toolbar.
- Choose the number of rooms and an assignment mode: Assign automatically, Assign manually, or Let participants choose room. For an exam session, choose Assign manually.
- Click Create. Rooms are built but not opened yet — you can rename rooms (e.g. "Exam Room 1") and drag participants in.
- Click Open All Rooms when ready.
While rooms are open, the host and co-hosts can move freely between rooms, move participants between rooms, and broadcast a text message or their microphone audio to every room at once — useful for announcements like "session ends in 15 minutes." Participants in a room can click Ask for Help, which pings the host to join their room. Make your VE team co-hosts so they share these controls.
Clicking Close All Rooms starts a 60-second countdown visible to everyone, after which participants return to the main room.
Recommended Zoom settings for exam sessions
In the breakout rooms Options panel (gear icon), change these defaults:
- Uncheck "Allow participants to choose room" — applicants go where VEs put them.
- Uncheck "Allow participants to return to the main session at any time" — the applicant stays in their exam room until the VEs release them; they use Ask for Help if they need the host.
- Check "Automatically move all assigned participants into breakout rooms" — without this, each participant must click an invitation to join, which confuses first-timers.
- Leave "Auto close breakout rooms after X minutes" off — exams are untimed; a countdown timer appearing mid-exam is exactly the distraction you don't want.
In the meeting itself:
- Enable the Waiting Room so applicants can be admitted one at a time for check-in.
- Mute participants upon entry.
- Set screen sharing to All Participants (Security menu or Share Screen arrow → Advanced Sharing Options). Some accounts default to host-only sharing, which blocks the applicant screen-share required by the Remote Session Procedures.
Google Meet
Breakout rooms require a paid Google Workspace edition
Breakout rooms are not available on free personal Google accounts or Business Starter. The meeting host needs an eligible edition such as Business Standard/Plus, Enterprise, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, or Workspace Individual. Anyone (including free accounts) can join a breakout room; only creating them is restricted.
SANDARC maintains a paid account that teams can use to host sessions with Meet breakout rooms — contact the VEC at vec@sandarc.org (see Key Contacts) to arrange access.
See Google's Use breakout rooms in Google Meet host guide for the full reference.
Before the meeting
Rooms can be pre-built from Google Calendar when creating or editing the event:
- In the event, click Add Google Meet video conferencing, then the gear icon (Change conference settings).
- Select Breakout rooms in the left menu.
- Choose the number of rooms (up to 100), then drag invitees into rooms, type names directly, or shuffle randomly.
- Save.
This works well for pre-assigning VEs to their exam rooms. As with Zoom, applicants who join by link rather than as signed-in invitees will need to be placed manually.
During the meeting
- Click the Meeting tools button (bottom right), then Breakout rooms. This is only available to the meeting host, and only from a computer browser — rooms cannot be created or managed from the mobile app.
- Choose the number of rooms, distribute participants manually or shuffle, and click Open rooms.
The host can join any room to observe, edit assignments while rooms are open, and click End rooms to bring everyone back. Participants get an Ask for help button that notifies the host. An optional timer can auto-end rooms with a 30-second warning — as with Zoom, leave the timer off for untimed exams.
Google Meet limitations to plan around
- Participants can always leave their room. Meet shows every breakout participant a Return to main call control and there is no way to lock them in. VEs in each exam room must watch that their applicant stays put; an applicant bouncing to the main room mid-exam should be treated like any other exam-area violation.
- There is no broadcast to all rooms. To make an announcement, visit each room in turn or end the rooms.
- Breakout chat is ephemeral — messages sent in a room are deleted when the room ends, and the host cannot see messages sent while they were not in the room.
- Dial-in phone participants cannot use Ask for help, and third-party conferencing hardware cannot join breakout rooms at all.
Zoom vs. Google Meet at a glance
| Capability | Zoom | Google Meet |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-build rooms before the meeting | Yes (web portal or CSV) | Yes (Calendar event) |
| Who can manage rooms | Host and co-hosts | Host only, computer browser only |
| Keep applicants in their room | Yes (option) | No — participants can always return |
| Broadcast to all rooms | Yes (text and audio) | No |
| Ask for help button | Yes | Yes (not for dial-in) |
| Extra cost | Included in free and paid plans | Paid Workspace editions only (SANDARC account available) |