Quick info on using Breakout Rooms:

Start by reading this Zoom Help Page about breakout rooms. The short video gives a good overview
You can send students to breakout rooms, move them around, enter any of the rooms, and you can broadcast messages to people in the rooms.
Anyone not assigned to a room will remain in the "Main Room" in which the meeting started.
Students cannot enter breakout rooms themselves, but they can leave on their own and they can ask you for help using a button in the room.
You can also return students to their breakout rooms manually or based on an automatic timer in the breakout rooms options. See more below.
Co-hosts, like a TA, CANNOT start breakout rooms or move students from one room to another.
Once inside the rooms, students can talk and screen share without disturbing anyone else. You can’t hear what people are saying in the rooms unless you enter the rooms with them.
Breakout rooms are not recorded unless someone who is allowed to record (co-host or host) is in the room and records.

Video Demo of "Breakouts" Feature

How to access breakouts feature
How to create 1 or many breakout groups
Breakout group features
Starting and ending breakouts
How to jump into a group breakout

Assigning Students to Breakout Rooms

You can easily assign students Automatically (randomly) or Manually to breakout rooms

To Assign Students to Breakout Rooms

First select Breakout Rooms from your Zoom controller bar at the bottom of the Zoom panel

Note: When you are sharing your screen Breakout Rooms is located under the “… More” tab of the controller bar

You then have the option of assigning students automatically or manually

To Assign Students Automatically

Click Automatically assign. You can change the number of rooms and thus the group size

To Assign Students Manually

Click Manually assign. You will be presented with options for creating rooms and a list of student names available to be placed in rooms

You have a lot of control over your breakout rooms. As a host you can:

Manually send students to breakout rooms
Let students move on their own once you set up room assignments for them
Move students from room to room
Enter the rooms
Broadcast messages to people in the rooms

Attendee Perspective

Meeting participants will be invited to join breakout rooms by a screen prompt
Once inside the rooms, students can talk, chat, and screen share without disturbing anyone else. You can’t hear what people are saying in the rooms unless you enter the rooms with them
Students can leave breakout rooms on their own and they can ask you for help using a Help button in the room if you enable it
Breakout rooms are not recorded unless someone who is allowed to record (co-host or host) is in the room and records
Breakout rooms cannot be used from the Zoom mobile app

Additional Breakout Room Controls

You can return students to their breakout rooms. You can also change breakout rooms mid class, but you will have to do it manually (unless you want to do random assignments again), so this is something that you should coordinate with a helper or TA who you can make host for a while you give instructions to the class. Also, it is critical that your helper TA not leave the Zoom classroom before you are done with the breakout rooms that he or she created because that will cause those rooms to disappear.

Experiment before you try this with a class!

Preassigned Breakout Rooms

In order to create preassigned breakout rooms in a Zoom Canvas class, two things need to be set up. First, be sure that breakout rooms are enabled for your specific class (done through Canvas) and second, edit the class in utexas.zoom.us so that preassigned Zoom breakout rooms are allowed.

Create your class in Canvas in the normal way

Next, edit it in utexas.zoom.us (not Canvas) and add the Breakout Room pre-assign option.

The easiest way to do this is to upload a csv file with all of your students’ Zoom UT EID email addresses. NOTE: When selecting the meeting you want to add your .csv file to you must select ‘edit all meetings’ in order for the function to be available for use.
Verify that the email addresses are in the format <YOUR_EID>@eid.utexas.edu. For example, if the student’s EID is bevo, enter bevo@eid.utexas.edu. This Zoom help article explains more about pre-assigning students to breakout rooms. It also contains a sample csv file. Download and edit the file provided. Save it without changing its file type and do not add any columns!

Recover Students to Pre-Assigned Breakout Rooms

If a meeting host has pre-assigned breakout rooms using a .csv file and the host clicks on the “Breakout Rooms” button prior to everyone joining the meeting, they will need to use the “Recover to pre-assigned rooms” feature to get students back into their pre-assigned rooms.

If this occurs, the host will need to:

Click on the dropdown button “Recreate” that is in the bottom left corner of the “Breakout Rooms” pop-up window and then select “Recover to pre-assigned rooms”
Now everyone who was pre-assigned to a breakout room will be assigned to their room

Late Student Addition to Breakout Rooms

If any student/participant joins a meeting after Breakout Rooms have been created you need to do the following to add them to a room:

Click on “Add A Room” then assign the new student to the new breakout room