Video conference break room: what is it and how to use it?

More and more people are choosing to work from home. Some situations force them to do their work at a distance, others allow them to choose. But still, most people rate remote work as more comfortable. That is why the possibilities of using videoconferencing have increased dramatically. But what if you need to split one large video conference into several smaller rooms for more specific discussions?

What are virtual lounges?

The virtual breakout room is a feature of video conferencing applications that allows you to divide meeting participants into multiple small groups in separate rooms within the same meeting. This feature offers the possibility for each group to discuss more specific things at the same time, which is more time efficient.

Benefits of using a break room

In addition to saving time, communication in meeting rooms has other advantages:

• the best teamwork - work on several ideas within the same project;
• online brainstorming - discuss ideas individually, then summarize the results and repeat as many times as you need;
• interactive activities, including small competitions, are easier to organize in break rooms.

Thanks to the features mentioned above, this feature is especially useful for the educational process. Teammates can focus more on their specific topics. So for complex projects, this is the best option to achieve high performance.

Breakout Room Tips

While breakout rooms bring many specific benefits to education and business, they are only useful when used correctly. Therefore, we believe that the following tips will help you:

• define activities - before dividing people into groups, they must clearly understand what and why they should do;
• do not have too many video participants in one room - breakout rooms are most effective if there are 3 to 5 people in each of them;
• keep them short - when people start working in small groups, it's easier for them to lose focus, so don't leave them for long;
• make them interactive - the more creative they are, the more sense, so make sure that these rooms are not boring for visitors;
• conduct post-event debriefing – simultaneous group work is best only if the conference leader asks for a summary (what did you do? what problems did you encounter? how did you solve them?).

The more organized and grounded this activity is, the more productivity it provides.

When and where to use break rooms?

As we mentioned, meeting room apps are best used for learning and complex projects involving the development of several different ideas within the same topic. Interactive sessions in webinars, discussion of imaginary examples or personal cases, preparation of some dialogues in a foreign language class, and even quick rehearsals before group presentations - all this is possible with the right organization.

If you want to organize interactive activities involving several groups within the same conference, it is a good idea to use meeting rooms. Look for convenient video conferencing equipment and go to new heights!