Episode 1: Breaking Up with Breakout Groups
In the Kates Discuss podcast, we discuss various topics surrounding pedagogical practice in higher education. Today we are discussing Breaking up with Breakout Groups.
Introduction to the Kates
Kate Thompson: We thought we would start our very first podcast with an introduction to the two of us, just so you know who we are and a little bit about us as educational developers and our background. My name is Kate Thompson and I'm an educational developer here at the Center for Learning and Teaching.
My portfolio as an ED focuses on online pedagogy, so that represents my main area of interest. I'm also interested in all sorts of different kinds of emerging pedagogies. I'm really interested in gamification and game-based learning, virtual reality or augmented reality.
I have a Ph.D. from Dalhousie University in Cognitive Psychology, and my research in that degree focused on human memory, learning, and attention. I also have a few years of experience in instructional design. And that's me in a nutshell.
Kate Crane: And I'm the other Kate, I’m Kate Crane. I also work in the online pedagogy portfolio at the CLT. My sub interests have to do with student engagement broadly speaking. Students as partners, I'm quite interested in partnering with students in making pedagogical decisions in the classroom.
I have a bachelor's in Economics and I have a master's degree from Dalhousie in Social Anthropology. Anthropology of work and labor is where my research interests lie. So, actually, I was exploring virtual worlds before this work because my masters degree was to do with how freelance software and web developers overcame their physical distance as part of a cohesive working group. So, if you're freelance and you're working online, how do you build solidarity despite the physical distance.
Kate Thompson: All those things that we all had to learn.
Kate Crane: Yeah. And that was my that was my master's degree work as I was finishing my thesis in March 2020. So it felt very real.
What Are Breakout Groups?
Kate Thompson: So our topic for today is Breaking Up with Breakout Groups. So let's begin with a bit of a discussion about what breakout groups are. What is it that we mean when we're talking about breakout groups just so that everybody's on the same page.
So when I think of breakout groups, I think of an online synchronous meeting where we're on Teams or Collaborate Ultra or something like that, having a session with students or a meeting with our department. And the breakout group function sends smaller groups of people out into their own little spaces to discuss with one another, and then you pull everybody back into the main room to sort of summarize what was discussed. The essence is that it's a way to do small group discussions in an online synchronous session, and that's what they're useful for. In an in-person scenario, you might send students off to separate tables. This is the virtual version of that.
Our Experiences with Breakout Groups
Kate Crane: So let's talk about our experiences and opinions on breakout groups. I was thinking back to a specific experience recently. I think it was a virtual conference event. It was one for which I didn't have a whole ton of good reasons for being there. I don't know that I was particularly interested. And so that really flavored, of course, my experience of the breakout group. Because I didn't have a good personal motivation for being there and maybe also because the presenters didn't provide for me a really good reason, there wasn't that sort of motivating like “This is why we're here”.
So when the breakout room started, you know, I was feeling like “Oh, I really don't want to turn my camera on. I don't know these people”. I think the feeling I get often is like, how do I get across to these utter strangers just sort of like a baseline of where I'm coming from, what I'm thinking about? If the work isn't done previously or before, the task in the breakout room just feels like a puzzle.
The other thing that I experienced that I really hate is that it feels as if you're being dropped onto a deserted island. Like there's this sudden separation, and if you don't have good connections with instructor or your peers, you can just feel like “I'm now deserted in this virtual space”. And there are probably cameras that are on, which makes it even worse. So that's been kind of my experience.
Kate Thompson: Yeah. The other thing I like about your deserted island analogy and something that came to mind when you were saying that is like not only are you on this deserted island, but you don't have any life preservers either. You don't have any support. I have often felt that way when I get put into a breakout room. It's fairly common, I think, to feel unprepared when I get there. So, I'm not really sure what it is we're supposed to be doing. I feel like we don't have enough time to do it. I've gotten into a session and there's just 5 or 10 minutes of the session presenter or panelists laying some groundwork. Then all of a sudden I'm in a breakout group and I've only spent 5 minutes thinking about this thing, and now I'm meant to discuss it. It's really easy with breakout groups to send people in with a feeling of “I don't know what I'm talking about”. I don't know about you, but as an academic - and I think this is common in academia - I don't like talking about things that I don't know about. I feel best when I'm an expert on the thing. So that makes breakout groups uncomfortable sometimes because I don't feel like an expert and I feel like I'm supposed to be.
Kate Crane: Such a good point. I think one of the things that we do, generally speaking, is, as you're saying, frontload all of the things one might need in a really quick way to make breakout rooms possible. That's such a like here are the ground rules. Here's what you need to be doing. Here's how much time you have – go!
And it's just, it's a lot to manage in one's head. Yeah, they can be not fun is the point.
Kate Thompson: Yes. And you see that trend - I'm sure everybody has experienced this - as soon as the presenter starts talking about breakout groups, that attendee number, it just starts dwindling. And all of a sudden everybody else's other meeting is starting. “Sorry, I have to go. My other meeting is starting”. And it's like… Is it though?
Kate Crane: Got to run to the washroom. My cat is yelling at the door, I have to feed the cat…
Kate Thompson: So that's some of our personal experience with breakout groups. We're both not super fans. I want to say I have been a part of some good break groups and we are going to talk about how to do a breakout group well, because there are times when that is the best tool to use.
But the reason that I am interested in discussing this is because I feel like breakout groups are easy to implement and therefore overused as a go-to strategy.
Limitations of Breakout Groups
Kate Crane: Let’s discuss some limitations of breakout groups, or just why breakout groups are not successful. Introverted people just typically are not going to enjoy these things, and even for extroverted people, it can be hard to enjoy them. Especially if the social relationships of either the course or the group are not well established or nurtured. So, if you're using a breakout group for task work without beforehand really helping people create those social connections, they're just not going to feel good.
English as a second language. Do you know if any of the platforms have closed captioning on what goes on with breakout groups?
Kate Thompson: Oh, that's a good question. I know that Teams has auto captioning for whatever is happening in the main group, but I'm not entirely sure about breakout groups.
Kate Crane: So we don't know that and that might be a limitation. It is difficult, for one thing, not feeling confident in one's English, or whatever the majority language is where you are, makes it very uncomfortable to participate in breakout groups. If the norm being established is that you have to turn your camera and mic on.
So English as a second language speakers can feel uncomfortable.
Kate Thompson: Yeah, they may struggle.
Kate Crane: And again, like we said, it's awkward to get together with strangers in a virtual setting and get something meaningfully done in 10 minutes time.
They can feel confusing or aimless and there may be just not enough time to complete the task and also build that social texture.
Kate Thompson: I think time is a huge consideration. It's going to take longer than you think. And like you're saying, especially if this breakout group is made up of people who don't know each other, because we need time to introduce each other. You think, well, I'll just cut that out. The conversation is going to suffer as a result of people feeling unfamiliar with one another. So we need to make time for that.
Kate Crane: Paradoxically, it's less efficient to cut out the social.
Kate Thompson: Yeah. So those are basically the summation of the limitations that I can think of with respect to breakout groups. I don't know if you have any more, but those are the main cons of breakout groups and why I think they sometimes don't work as well as hoped.
Alternatives to Breakout Groups
Kate Thompson: The first thing that we want to discuss, then, is: If I'm not going to do a breakout room because they suck, what can I do, Kate and Kate? What are some alternative activities? Because we have these online sessions, meetings, lectures, workshops, whatever it is, and we want them to be active in some way. We don't want to just be having people listen passively to our presentation, the way that everybody's doing to this podcast right now, because that's boring. What we're hoping for is in these online synchronous sessions to have active learning happening, right? So here are some ideas for things you can do in an online synchronous session that classifies as an active learning activity.
The first one, which I think is hopefully pretty obvious and everybody will have thought of if they were trying to make up the list on their own, is to make use of polls or polling questions. Scatter some questions throughout your presentation. There's all kinds of software and technology that you can use to do this kind of thing. I like Microsoft Forms. Top Hat is one that instructors can use at Dal, but we also have publicly available things like Mentimeter and Poll Everywhere. And you can also just ask a question and tell people to respond with a particular emoji based on which option they want to endorse or even just have them answer in the chat or something like that. So polling is an active learning strategy.
Kate Crane: And so what kind of context or teaching moment might polls be the best? And what comes immediately to mind is you want to very quickly test comprehension, gauge confusion, what else?
Kate Thompson: You're looking for opinions and you know what some of the common opinions might be. Because these polls are going to be most useful if they are multiple choice questions where you can select one or multiple answers.
Kate Crane: I've seen polls used in quite a socially engaging manner, actually as an icebreaker. I was classroom observing for a faculty member here and she put up five or six images of different sheep and they were sort of anthropomorphic and they looked like really happy or they're having a bad day or like they stuck their finger in electrical socket. And so she asked the class, which sheep are you vibing with today? And it was just a fun way to open the class.
Kate Thompson: Yeah. One of our former colleagues, Peter Newberry, did the same thing in a session that he and I ran. And it was just becoming winter, I think. And so he had a bunch of different snowmen. And it was which snowman are you? So that's really fun, too. It gets conversations going and people talking about how they're feeling. I like that because it's checking in. It's making this social connection with people.
Kate Crane: And that social connection is happening and it's not happening in the breakout group.
I'll talk about chat waterfall because I use it recently and I was so happy with it. Okay, so a chat waterfall is when you pose a question to the group and you ask them to type the response in the chat, but they cannot hit send until you tell them to. And so you give them a few minutes to respond and then you say “go” and then everyone hits send all at the same time. And thus the waterfall - a multitude of responses appear in the chat. This is very cool for a couple of reasons. Some people might feel uncomfortable putting their opinion in a chat box if they think “maybe somebody else is going to say it, and I don't have to say it”, or if they're reading other people's responses, they might become less confident about their own response.
What are some other reasons why this is a cool thing?
Kate Thompson: An example that I always give is that some people are really fast thinkers and really fast typers and they are going to get their answer out there right at the start. The chat waterfall equalizes the playing field a little bit and allows those people who are going to take a little bit longer to think, to get their words down.
And like you said, if multiple people are thinking the same thing, that's useful to know from the perspective of somebody who's doing the presentation or leading the session. When somebody sees somebody else post what they were going to say, they might refrain. But it's cool to see that repetition, and that also creates community within the classroom. Because it's like, hey, Kate said that too. I agree!
Kate Crane: Absolutely, you can see your own ideas reflected in those of others. And you're so right, because I think why I liked it in this last instance that I used it, I was running a workshop, and it was a very quick way for me to get to know where people were coming from in their thinking and what they were expecting from it. And I was actually able to tweak a little bit where I was going in the workshop. Because there were a few people that said the same thing and I'm like “Okay, I'm on the right track in terms of my own agenda”. And there were ten other people who said this other thing and I said to myself “Oh, there's interest in this one topic. I think I'll add that in”.
So, really cool activity. And again, the social element is there because I think I've seen it also in use specifically for sharing personal information. So you can see where people are from, for example.
Kate Thompson: I really, really like the chat waterfall. I like that it introduces this pause in the session where you're allowing them to spend time reflecting instead of just go, go, go. It's good to have a little bit of a break as well if you are presenting.
Related to that, giving time for reflection is the next suggestion that I have, which is just including time for them to do work individually on their own. So you're going to ask them to do a thing. You can't tell who is actually doing it, and you're not going to ask for evidence of it necessarily. You're not going to ask them to post to the chat. But it's like, okay, we're going to do this activity now. I'm going to ask you to write down your favorite colour, and they write it down, and then that becomes useful somehow.
An example of this is the notion of a minute paper. That's a popular practice that I've seen used even in face-to-face or in-person classrooms. But you could do a minute paper in an online session and just give them a minute to write on whatever particular topic.
I've also used this format before in presentations where there's a step-by-step process that I'm trying to go over and I build in breaks in the session for them to do each step after we discuss that step. So, “Here's what you're going to do in this step. Here's some tips and tricks. All right. I'm going to stop talking for 5 minutes so you can go ahead and work on that. If you're having questions, you can raise your hand or type in the chat a question” and that kind of thing.
This could be something that they have to submit at the end of the class if they've worked on it and you're expecting them to do it, but it doesn't have to be submitted, and then you can just allow that flexibility for them to participate or not based on their needs and interests. Typically, with break out groups, you don't really get to choose whether you're going to do it or not, and if you get chucked into this breakout group with three people and you don't feel like engaging, it becomes obvious to the other two people that you're not there.
Kate Crane: I've seen a really cool way, if you absolutely need to see the individual work that's happening. We tried in a recent workshop to give the time for individual work, but we diverted everybody to their own Google slide. And when you're in Google, you're anonymous, but you have a slide into which you can work. So you can just focus on your slide, you can see what other people are doing, and it is anonymous. If you'd like to see that there is progress happening. Because this is the virtual environment and you can't look over their literal shoulders.
Kate Thompson: I think one of the one of the main draws of a breakout group is that it provides that opportunity for collaboration in a group. So what are some other ways that we can promote collaboration in the online session? Because those other three examples that we've just given don't really do that.
I've seen lots of other options for collaboration be used to great effect and in online sessions lately. So here I'm talking about things like providing a communal whiteboard. You might use something like Padlet or Jamboard.
Here students are still collaboratively creating and editing content, but they can do this facilitated by those softwares all in one huge group. And like you’re suggesting with Google Slides where everybody gets their own slide, you could separate people into groups and say “these people are going to go on this slide and these people are going to go on this slide”.
But you might instead have different topics. So on a Jamboard or in Google slides, each slide has a different topic. So if you want to go and collaborate about this topic, you can go there. And that allows them to self-select where they want to be and what they have ideas about.
Kate Crane: I love that. I think what I love about these sort of asynchronous-synchronous activities is that you can actually kind of play with time a little bit. Depending on what you're doing, you could give students a few hours in a day to head over to the whiteboard. And so you can focus on other things in your synchronous activity and have this thing part of that, but also, they can go to it throughout the week. Or it can help build those connective touch points in your online virtual environment. Playing that spectrum of asynchronicity into synchronicity.
Kate Thompson: I like that these collaborative methods result in something. There's an artifact that they've created together and usually there's a way of archiving it, like turning it into a PDF or something. And so it can be a really useful tool, or something that they can go back to and use to refresh their memory about the session.
They could use it to study. You could even have it be the designing of a concept map of some kind to help them frame and put together the stuff that they're learning. So they end up creating something together, and that feels good. With the breakout group, I find sometimes these sorts of tools are used in a breakout group and you can do the same thing. But often it's just a verbal discussion and after you're done, it just dissipates and you don't see this tangible thing that you've created.
How to Choose Which Active Learning Tool to Use
Kate Crane: I think in general, when we're teaching in the online environment, we do a lot of knee-jerk stuff. And I think our fear is that, oh goodness, online environments, no one is going to be engaged.
We think “I have to make sure people are seen and heard because otherwise they're not engaged” and I think when you're deciding on breakout groups or not breakout groups and which engaging activity, it's always about the question: What kind of engagement are you really seeking here?
Do they really have to turn their cameras and mics on? Is the breakout group truly the thing that is going to really elevate the activity? So - permission to not use breakout groups is essentially what we’re giving.
Kate Thompson: And really thinking critically about which one of these options you want to use, and you can use your intended learning outcomes as guidance. So, after this, we're going to go on to talk about some tips about how to use breakout groups, because neither of us think that it's a tool that you should never use.
But what I think is happening is that it's a sort of default and that it's not always applicable and it's not always the best. There are specific considerations that you can take into consideration when you're designing it to make it better. But even then, it's not always going to be the tool that you need.
And so thinking about your learning outcomes and what it is that you need might help you choose something other than a breakout room or decide that that's what you need.
Kate Crane: Exactly. And also thinking in terms of the ideas and concepts of interaction and presence and community and building that social virtual space. There are other places in your online teaching in which you can and should make that happen. Thinking about whether students had a lot of opportunity to be “face-to-face” synchronously or asynchronously this week. Are we feeling a little distance from one another? You know, should I incorporate breakout groups for the reason to increase that kind of social lubrication? Just thinking holistically across the entire scope of your online learning environments, how is interaction and presence happening? And maybe you don't need to use breakout groups this week.
Tips for Successful Breakout Groups
Kate Crane: So, tips for successful breakout groups. When are breakout groups useful? If you very specifically need to have students rub their virtual shoulders, use it to have students share their goals for the course and their favorite ice cream flavors and what they're struggling with. So they can build up that peer rapport. Use breakout groups at the start of your course, maybe more often when you're trying to build up that community feel.
Kate Thompson: These breakout groups aren't like, okay, you have a learning objective task. This is just like, okay, we're going to go talk about our pets in these breakout groups, or something like that. Introduce yourselves, have a little chat.
Kate Crane: Maybe you have a massive course, there’s 200 people and you just would like to help students form a little bit more intimacy. Make some friends. So breakout groups are a great tool for increasing social connectivity.
Okay, so other tips for when you want to use breakout groups for task-based active learning stuff. Making it voluntary or opt-in, especially with those auxiliary activities like with a choose your own slide or choose your own thing you want to work on.
Kate Thompson: I think this is really important and I don't see it implemented very often, but a few times I have been in sessions where the presenter will say “We're going to do breakout groups now. If you would like to participate in the breakout groups, raise your hand”, and then those are the people who get put into breakout groups. This allows people who are not like feeling up for it, or who are in a busy café, or whatever situation they're in that they feel like they can't participate in a breakout group will be able to opt out.
Kate Crane: That's interesting.
Kate Thompson: Yeah, it is. It is really interesting. I was afraid when this was happening that just nobody would want to do it. But plenty of people were interested.
Kate Crane: So what did this person do to make sure people understood what was going to happen? What was the lead up?
Kate Thompson: So it was like “We're going to go into breakout groups now. The purpose is going to be to discuss blah, and you're going to do this…” you know, gave the description about what was going to happen, but also said “participation in the breakout groups is voluntary. It's totally fine if you don't want to go into the breakout groups. We will only send the people who opt in.”
This is also not an opt out thing. So, you say that you want to go in and not “I don't want to”.
Kate Crane: So what did the other group do?
Kate Thompson: They just hung out in the main room, and just were quiet. They kind of just took a break. But you could have some kind of other activity for people who stayed in the main room that didn't require the level of engagement and audio and video that a breakout group involves.
Hopefully that'll be an option for your purposes. Like sometimes you might want to be tracking what everybody's working on. And so this might be like a required thing, but my argument is that it's more accessible and comfortable if there are other options, if there's several options and that the breakout group participation isn't the only way that they can achieve the goal that you have.
And that means that the people who are not going to participate aren't going to participate. It makes the groups that exist much richer and stronger.
Kate Crane: Our next tip is to give enough time.
Kate Thompson: However much time you think it's going to take, double it.
Kate Crane: Or split them up into breakout groups to ask them to share their favorite ice cream flavour, bring them back, then split them up again. Build up to the moment in which they can effectively do the task. Whatever kind of building that needs to happen.
Kate Thompson: I think it's a little bit tricky as an instructor or a presenter to effectively gauge how long it's going to take people to do the thing that you're asking them to do. But I guess just remember that they're novices at whatever it is that you're having them do, and so it will probably take them longer than you think.
Kate Crane: And I think as many of us experienced during pandemic, the virtual environment, basically everything is constructed in real time because we don't have physical cues from the classroom. You know, it just a lot is not there that we have to constantly build. And we need time for that.
Kate Thompson: That's a good point. So even if this is a task that you've done in-person before and you've got it really well timed from that, it's going to take longer than that does.
Kate Crane: In terms of time are there's a few tips here that we have in our little list that will actually help make it more efficient. One of which is assigning roles: send people in with very specific roles, whether it's note taking or time keeping or maybe it's discussion catalyzer.You can say whoever has the nearest birthday will be the group leader or the person who reports back to the group.
Kate Thompson: Another really important role is the person who's going to talk when they get back. Now, I would say, you don't want to randomly determine that person and maybe not any of the roles. My preference is like, okay, you've got five people in the group. There's these three roles. So three of you need to volunteer to do something.
Timekeeper is great, anybody can do timekeeper, note taker is great. Usually note taker goes with reporting back, but not necessarily. So that gives them this responsibility and agency and it also it gives them some direction. Some groups might come to this kind of process on their own, but that doesn't always happen.Sometimes people just flounder and they don't know what to do. And so giving them these sorts of tips really helps to give direction.
Kate Crane: The next tip is about group size. Small groups - 4 to 5 is plenty. Any larger is just too unwieldy.
Kate Thompson: Too many people is just going to bloat the time frame, and I think fewer than four is also problematic just because sometimes one person's connection isn't great, or they're not engaging, and then you end up just having a conversation between two people or even only one person. I think four or five is like a sweet spot.
Kate Crane: Next tip is to give good instructions that can be taken into the breakout group. So helpful. We can do this in a few ways. You could link to a Google doc that they can refer to that has the instructions in it. In Teams you can copy and paste the instructions into all the chat boxes for the groups.
Kate Thompson: Yeah, if you have text instructions.
Just somehow for them to access the actual instructions, because you can tell them the instructions before they get to the breakout group, but then once you send them in there and they're done introducing each other, they’re like “wait… what were we supposed to do?”
Especially if there's like, three things that they're supposed to discuss. But even if it's just one thing, I think putting some thought into how they're going to access the instructions while they're in the breakout groups is really important. This is related to setting them up for success by adequately preparing them for the task. So providing those instructions is really important, but another thing that I mean here is by preparing them and giving them all the information and the skills and the tools that they need to do task. This is going back to what I was saying at the beginning of this discussion where I often find that I end up in a breakout room and feel like I don't have what I need to do what I've been asked to do.
Like I was only given a five or ten minute introduction to the topic, and now I'm supposed to use those skills. So you can have a breakout group in the first 10 minutes, but the demand has to be pretty low.
Kate Crane: That may look like making the PowerPoint presentation, if that's what's happening, available to click through. That might be required for students to feel adequately prepared. Again, what do they need to refer back to or what kind of individual thinking time. Maybe, they do just need time to think this through before they come to the group.
Kate Thompson: Maybe it's a matter of you going through an example or two of what you're asking them to do as well.
The next tip is choosing suitable tasks - we kind of already talked about that.
Kate Crane: Also creating social connection space. Just so important. I think if there's a thing that's just good online teaching hygiene, it's just where can you stick in building the social connection.
Kate Thompson: Making sure that they don't feel awkward around the people that they're supposed to now be opening up to and working with.
Kate Crane: And then time to report back. So have them report back on their discussion and save lots of time for this.
Kate Thompson: That's another thing that I really think is important because it's a really missed opportunity when you do breakout groups and that all just stays in the breakout group.
Kate Crane: It helps them be accountable to the work that's going on if they report it.
Kate Thompson: Yeah, for sure. But then in addition, everyone gets to benefit from everyone else's discussion. That's like the biggest thing for me because a lot of times everybody's kind of discussing the same things. But I've also seen sessions where different breakout groups are discussing different things. And it's like, you know, I want to know what everybody else got to.
Kate Crane: And it can be a verbal report back or it can be typed into the chat or put in a Padlet. Again, having that artifact that you can go away with. A Teams meeting will preserve that chat and students can go back in and take a look. So, having an artifact that can be referenced.
Kate Thompson: The thing I really like about the typed in chat and having a Padlet versus giving everyone time in the meeting to verbally report back is that it's more time efficient and it creates that artifact. It can take a long time to go through each breakout group and give everybody the chance, and then you always end up rushing through people at the end.
Kate Crane: So true. Helps the people who prefer to type to be heard. What you might do is groups might put all their ideas in the Padlet, but then they might report back their key idea.
Kate Thompson: Yeah. And you can open it up. So put everything in the Padlet, but does anybody want to talk about anything or elaborate on something they put in there? Because for some people talking through it is easier than writing. But for some people writing is easier than talking through it. So having both options is really great.
Kate Crane: Multiple modes, yeah.
Kate Thompson: So those are some tips about how to do a breakout group well, to maximize the success of it, if you need to use breakout groups at all. Our argument is that sometimes you will, but often it's not the best tool. We've got lots of other examples of things that you can try instead, and that is breaking up with breakout groups, I think.
Kate Crane: I think that's it!
Thank you for joining us in this very first episode.
Jake Nissen: Do you break up with breakout rooms by text, email, through a friend, in person or through folded puzzle?
Kate Crane: Like from elementary school? Choose your fate?
Jake Nissen: Yeah a little like self-wrapped paper envelopes. Anybody do that when they were in school?
Kate Crane: Oh yeah. Like the threads of destiny.
Kate Thompson: Oh yeah. I know what you mean. Any of the above. As long as you do it, right?
Kate Crane: Right. Take the plunge. Be brave.
Kate Thompson: You don’t need to worry about breakout groups feelings, right? The way you would with a human.
Kate Crane: Exactly. Good question from our one live listener here.