You need the right location and meeting space, too. Think of the breakout room feature as a physical place you have to design in a digital space.”. 2. Can they choose their own groups? Collaborative event sales software that increases qualified leads and drives direct revenue. Visual learners are fond of text and learn best by watching demonstrations before trying something on their own. It’s important to timebox these breakouts to avoid extending the time for each activity on your schedule. Create ‘secret,’ invite-only workshops to encourage participation. After you gauge interest, find speakers, leaders, and facilitators to meet those needs. In advance of the training session, prepare some documents or boards (you can use MS Word or create boards with an image manipulation program) with a set of 4 pictures on each. If you are an experienced virtual classroom designer, please build on the basics and share your expertise. Include the full audience with a polling app for live answers, see how well teams can answer industry-specific questions, or poll the audience on a variety of subjects and have the teams guess their answers. No one breakout session arrangement stands out as better than the rest. The number of participants in the breakout room. Smalls groups allow members to talk easily without constantly toggling the audio button between mute and unmute. Need help with your upcoming online event? Are they an excellent feature? 20. Allow participants to unlock invitations by visiting a specific number of booths, finishing a scavenger hunt, or attending a pre-set session schedule. Useful and enjoyable event breakout sessions are often related to the event theme. Make sharing optional. The breakout session schedule for Indiana University's Virtual Statewide IT Conference 2021. Their feedback is how you create a bigger, better breakout schedule at your next event. The front row will likely include more visual learners than kinesthetic or auditory learners. So seriously that we just launched a feature to allow participants freely move between themed breakout rooms. Maintaining pace and adjusting as necessary, Monitoring breakout activities, without injecting expertise into a team discussion, Overseeing post-workshop discussions and offering answers when asked, rather than, Recording results and leading a closing group discussion. Have a plan for unregistered attendees—prepare for an influx of last-minute attendees with extra seats and materials, and consider day-of registration to fill empty seats. Our brains may have adapted to this virtual style of collaborating. Spending entire days of looking at a Brady-Bunch style screen is uncomfortable. Our lives are more virtual than real. Don’t overdo it, either: Too many sessions can leave you with burnt-out attendees. 17. So, are you letting your participants make a difference? The catch? 1:1 appointments. How? Read also: 15 Virtual Icebreakers for Your Remote Meetings. So what are some best practices for virtual breakouts in meetings to ensure they produce results? Provide instruction on how to create a Mind Map and encourage attendees to capture their thoughts using this structured format. The goals of our experiment were to: Diversify the virtual learning experience to engage learners. Use floor plan software to design event seating layouts for each session. Find a virtual conferencing tool that allows you to send attendees into breakout sessions. People already have enough online exchanges, conference calls, and virtual meetings. A breakout session to inspire new teaching methods. Our newest feature solved just that… our activities now come with a timer. Go beyond lectures with these breakout session ideas Interactive event breakout sessions. Use the attendee data you collect to create your breakout programs. Host a Lego® Serious Play® program to encourage building and ideas-sharing through play. It’s 2018 after all. We decided to experiment with virtual breakout rooms in two of the virtual sessions – the case study discussion and applied learning exercise debrief. Ask attendees to fill out a blank BINGO card with challenges they face, either personally or within the industry. An Ask Me Anything (AMA) presentation is a popular Q&A format that encourages attendees to guide the session. Collaborating in small groups to solve problems and work towards completing a larger task are at the heart of PBL. Participants mark off the challenges they’ve tackled on the card by listing two actionable ideas for each concern. Often, breakout participants rejoin the full group to present or discuss the results of the workshop. Provide more opportunities for networking, collaboration, and peer-to-peer learning. Encourage group cooperation with a trip planning exercise. Where? Use a virtual whiteboard, or collaborative documents like Google docs, or just share the questions via chat. Dump instructions and discussion prompts into the chat and expect people to keep track of it. If it’s a more involved discussion, related to the theme of the meeting, with two or more different prompts, give it 8-10 minutes. Free Event Management Software for Planners and Properties. Pairs are ideal because it allows both people to actively participate… either as a listener or a speaker. Design a Breakthrough Bingo game. This is one of the breakout session ideas that’s great for creatives and those who communicate best through visuals. If the aim is to provide time to unwind, look for participatory sessions that get attendees moving, relaxing, or creating. Having an avatar creates a way for attendees to feel present and engage in a virtual … The purpose of these breaks is to help build relationships among participants. Host a Business Book Club discussion: Announce the book ahead of time so attendees have a chance to read and prepare. The goal is to get a bingo. Create a beginners’ Learn to Code for hands-on learning—Google’s kid-centric CS First program is packaged and ready to go for group activities. More features = being able to use breakout rooms for activities beyond small-group discussion or brainstorming. We were lost. Have a meeting moderator. It eliminates all the extra effort put into icebreaking activities, which reduces the stress of running short on time during workshops. 11. Well, facilitators can prompt a question. Hi, I am Tulika, a content strategist and writer who is trying to decode the psychology behind human beings and how they interact. First, determine what an effective session means in terms of the specific event. teambuilding.com, tiny campfire and Tea vs Coffee are run by the same folks as Museum Hack. Inspired to engage your event attendees even further? Is your goal to increase engagement? But remember, these extra tools do the job but make things hectic, and require much more planning. 28. Without a clear objective, they’re time-wasters at best, and sources of frustration at worst—for the participants and you. If your platform has built-in collaboration features and activities for breakout rooms, use those. Use the Human Spectrogram technique to uncover common industry struggles—then collaborate in small groups to find ways to solve these challenges. These breakouts can be used to facilitate lively discussions during sessions. Roundtable discussions allow space to participate in discussion or debate in an interactive, equal-footing format. Don’t worry. The beauty of the breakout is your ability to tailor it to the needs of your event and audience. This will end the rooms and call everyone back to the main session. With these virtual breakout rooms, people are going to be interacting primarily through the Q&A, and the chat, and polling versus other interactions. And the countdown is visible to the participants, too. On a video call. You start your day with a standup meeting, on a video call. Prompt icebreakers so that they can build connections. As the facilitator, it’s still your job to engage these smaller groups, even after giving them a problem statement to work on. But seriously, if inbuilt activities aren’t an option, and you want to undertake something a little more collaborative, use whiteboarding apps or shared documents. Host a discussion, then encourage participants to create a list of top personal or professional goals for the next month, six months, year—and what success looks like. BREAKOUT DESCRIPTION: Presentation Slides. Breakout Rooms Ideas: Virtual Event Support. Seamlessly manage and optimize group sales performance across your entire portfolio. Breakout rooms can be a valuable tool for collaboration and discussions because they allow people to have a meeting in a smaller group, completely isolated from the main room. Students can meet in their virtual breakout rooms to discuss the chapter they read the night before. Virtual coffee breaks are usually one-on-one or small group sessions, and are conducted for 15 to 30 minutes during the work day. This way, the subject matter is relevant to attendees. Well-designed breakout sessions can help build consensus, formulate new ideas, and generate solutions around key issues. Encourage participants to use the “Yes, and…” technique: Suggestions from others should be met with acceptance (“Yes! Gauge interest, see where you succeeded, and learn what snags to watch for next time by sending post-event surveys to the participants. Host an Open Mic event for The Moth-style storytelling or model an event after the TED Talks format. In fact, virtual training is fast gaining foothold in the corporate world as it allows employers to offer their teams many of the benefits of a live classroom session without the associated costs. After two hours of being in a workshop with a facilitator, we were left to our own devices. At the end of a breakout session, send attendees a message using your event networking platform to gather their feedback. Virtual Coffee Breaks. Can breakout room members use a whiteboard in the breakout room? How can we improve breakout room experiences? Be sure to mention that nonmusical teammates are welcome too; after all, performances benefit from an audience! Challenge attendees to let loose with Mario Kart battles; up the ante with a bracket-style competition for the duration of the event. Lightning talks are short presentations in the vein of PechaKucha. Check out our list of virtual happy hour ideas for more inspiration. How can space impact discussions? Build space within nature for attendees to disconnect from their tech. 18. It's been teased for months but virtual breakout rooms for Microsoft Teams is almost here. The facilitator can’t do it all alone. Remember, there will always be some need for participants to settle down, virtually or otherwise. Get insights on improving collaboration in virtual interactions. Auditory learners are often the first to speak up and value discussion. They also have facilitators who know how to lead sessions and draw participants out, without being overbearing. Riff on the reality show with a Start-Up Shark Tank-style session: Invite makers, creators, inventors, and more to promote their ideas during a pitch session to earn prizes, investors, or mentoring. Diagram events, wow attendees, and win clients with free planning tools. But the question remains … What’s the best way to track time? It’s collaboration-made-simple 101! In the evening, you conduct a workshop for marketing professionals. Learn how to create interactive presentations or explore tips for engaging millennial attendees. Sponsors and exhibitors are always looking for ways to network with attendees. Is it possible to move between breakout rooms? The goal is to find ways to approach the challenges listed. Still, there are three main learning styles to target. 32. It’s the only platform in the market currently that allows you to design experiences inside breakout rooms. Intuitive and at the click of a button! The benefits of these activities include collaboration, problem-solving, and getting people up and moving. If that is not true in a given situation, they, and they alone, must take responsibility to use their two feet, and move to a new place where they can make a difference.”. People continue to use it in the same old way; a video meeting with lesser people. Breakout rooms aren’t just a gimmick or a fun virtual meeting feature. 15. This could be efficient, but it leaves too much room for error. Spark culinary talents with a cooking class—or challenge confident chefs in friendly competition. After the cards are full, create small group pairings, either randomly or using common themes. As a meeting leader, this is a nightmare. Ask yourself: “What do I hope to achieve from sending participants to breakout rooms?”. Sharing case studies, trends, and statistics may be better suited for a presentation-style session. Experts say meeting leaders tend to have too many participants in breakout groups. You then have a 2-hour session to brainstorm a client’s new product launch, again on a video call. Include a book synopsis and relevant notes for attendees who didn’t read the book, but still want to participate. If it’s a version of “Ugh, not another one,” or “Why today?” you aren’t alone. Each person often has a prominent style that works best for them, whether they know it or not. Create a challenge—visit every state park in Colorado or taste-test at the top 25 maple producers in Vermont—and task teams with mapping out the best route to meet the challenge. Create space for a goal-setting workshop. Answering that will help you design a kickass digital space. Test coordination and get attendees moving with a throwable microphone. Scheduling breakout groups too early may earn fewer registrants. The latter gives participants the chance to test their ideas in a small group and then collaborate more confidently in a larger group. Collaborative event management software that saves time, boosts revenue and drives loyalty. Even with a pre-registration requirement, people may be looking for an opportunity to join a session on the day of the event. By default, meeting participants are moved to their assigned rooms as soon as you open the room, but you can turn off this setting; see Turn off automatic entry to breakout rooms.. To open all the rooms at the same time, select Start rooms.. To open a single room, select More options next to the room and then Open room. Organize in Advance . Drop-In Discussions provide a low-pressure format for conversations, networking, and engagement. The best event breakout sessions include a participatory element that builds engagement and distinguishes the breakout from more passive conference moments, such as the keynote and panel discussions. Rather than telling participants what to think, the facilitator should encourage them to think. When participants return to the large group, they find it easier to report ideas from the small group with the confidence that comes from testing and sharing perspectives in that relatively safer space.”. There might be a person in each group who wrestles for control, but it may provide a lesson in team dynamics. And, every participant can see each group’s proposed solution. Why? To celebrate, I thought I'd gather together everything we know about how breakout rooms will work so you can get ready to start using the new feature as soon as it's available, Virtual breakout rooms is expected available to everyone by the end of November 2020. Hold breakout groups. Hosts can not only fix the duration for each activity but also check how much time is left as participants run through the breakout session task. Are virtual breakout rooms doing that? Allowing smaller groups for more involved discussions. Participants present their route and reasoning (plus challenges) to the full group. 46. In a virtual environment, the breakout sessions may be the only time attendees are speaking and interacting with one another—so it’s crucial to keep them engaged. It can even reveal less-popular options that may need to be adjusted, promoted, or cut from the schedule. Can you prompt discussion questions? Are icebreaker sessions possible? 7. Can participants play and interact there without guidance, to achieve set goals? Use a digital whiteboard app to display workshop group notes on a big screen for full-group discussion, and reference during the final presentation. When choosing the breakout rooms, consider these factors. Pre-registration ensures you’ve got adequate materials, space, and staff necessary to host the workshops. The ideal time of a breakout group should depend on two factors: If it’s a ‘let’s introduce ourselves’ session, conducted in pairs, give it 5 minutes. 22. For on-the-move sessions, skip tables altogether. To help inspire new teachers, and to furnish seasoned lecturers with some fresh ideas, the Society for American Archaeology Annua… Share ideas, provide individual feedback, or conduct a smaller brainstorming session during a virtual meeting… use breakout rooms for any sort of discussion. If the goal is to brainstorm on a specific topic, give them question prompts. What matters is that your attendees feel the sessions add value to the event. Incorporating tools to increase comprehension and focus attention can improve the participants’ experiences, no matter their style. Explore this comprehensive guide to design breakout sessions your attendees appreciate and enjoy. 33. 13. On the training day, separate the participants into groups of 4 people in breakout rooms and assign each group one of the files with the photos. We need to interact with virtual breakout rooms and within it differently and more efficiently. Hand out awards—from “Longest Flight” to “Biggest Crash”—to the winners. If your breakout sessions are scheduled too late in the day, attendees may be more focused on going home and engagement may suffer. As with any event, it’s important to know participants’ expectations in advance. By clicking 'Sign Up', you consent to allow Social Tables to store and process the personal information submitted above to provide you the content requested. Kinesthetic learners learn by doing. And the best part? One-on-one mentoring sessions, scheduled in fifteen-minute or half-hour blocks with relevant experts. It’s a gamechanger for productive virtual sessions. Answer me this… What’s the first thought in your head when you look at your schedule and see a virtual meeting? Visual learners thrive with visual aids. Be present and be there! Consider including 4-10 participants per "room" to maximize engagement. Use outdoor yoga, a guided walking tour, or team-building exercises to encourage participants to put down the phone and unwind. Tailor each room layout to the session style. Provide each breakout group with a poster or canvas and ask them to illustrate the main points or ideas they took away from the previous presentation. Of course, preparing for a virtual audience is quite different than planning for in … Will participants be able to collaborate freely? ), floor plan software to design event seating layouts, ← The Most Creative Corporate Event Entertainment Ideas That Really Work, What’s New: Sales & Catering CRM Updates That Simplify Client Management →, Do Not Sell My Personal Information (CCPA Required), Explore ideas in a less structured format, Time and space for deeper dives into relevant topics, Targeted content that’s of interest to some, but not all attendees, Targeted content across experience and skill levels (i.e., beginner and advanced), Minimal distractions. Explore the Event Sponsorship Guide and the Virtual Sponsorship Workbook for tips, tools, and exercises to get you on track.. Immersive Virtual Event Ideas 13. To host a virtual jam session, invite your employees to a video call and tell teammates to bring instruments. Asking them a single question like “On a scale of 1-10, was this session helpful?” is a great way to ensure people will respond, while also collecting valuable data that will help you plan even better sessions in the future. They divide people into groups, send them to breakout rooms, and magically expect to see results. In his Virtual Open Space Experiment, Nenad Maljković displays how to design a flexible session with multiple breakout rooms, encouraging free movement. What’s your favorite tip? Can they make online workshops and virtual meetings better? Build in time for each person to introduce themselves and answer a get-to-know-you question or … Host a Paint and Sip party for the artistically inclined or curious. Event breakout sessions are valuable tools in the conference planner’s belt, so long as they’re focused and purposeful. launched a feature to allow participants freely move between themed breakout rooms. And every event needs a moderator. Think about whether you want these groups to work on the same task or approach different problem angles. Suggested ideas to include in the description are the names of the presenters, links to related websites, apps that will be used, or even a short clip introducing the session. Be prepared for questions or calls for assistance. Instructions for all activities below. One of the most effective virtual networking ideas is birds of a feather sessions, which are targeted breakout sessions that allow attendees to meet and discuss a particular topic. A breakout session, also known as a breakout meeting or workshop session, is generally a workshop, discussion, or presentation on a specific topic that serves as a portion of the agenda of a larger program, seminar, conference, or convention. Hand out raffle tickets in exchange for attendance, and offer additional tickets for participation. Interactive games and activities help improve attendance and engagement during event breakout sessions. This is a more natural conversational experience than large virtual conferences. Each smaller circle was an independent breakout experience. Custom Avatars . Breakout meeting ideas like kicking off the breakout with a good icebreaker to get people engaged is a great way to start strong and invoke interest. Keep kinesthetic learners focused with pipe cleaners, Legos, or Plus-Plus blocks—tactile tools to improve memory and focus. Breakout rooms are so much fun!” said no one ever. But, what’s the ideal number of participants for breakout rooms? Except for finding business locations on a custom map, Google isn’t allowed for directions or times. The digital spaces we inhabit need to change and evolve. 14. Host a paper airplane making and flying competition, challenge teams to an egg drop contest, or facilitate a marshmallow challenge. 31. Not on Toasty, though! Here are 10 virtual workshop ideas to hit the mark, and will mark a departure from the regular ideas for online sessions that everyone depends on. And this need to focus on so much means that we often don’t really focus on anything. 24. And most importantly, can they be more collaborative and engaging? He built a central space where all the instructions were provided. Over the last decade, undocumented young people have been a driving force in changing the way Americans view immigrants, and this session focuses on a specific case study that will lift up the learnings of one of the biggest campaigns of the immigrant rights movement during the Trump administration. Using virtual breakout rooms can be simple – as long as you have thought it through. Stage an outdoor relay race to get the blood flowing after the lunch break. 26. Certain seating arrangements leave specific impressions. Structure your goal as a task. 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