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We use Zoom to run our online mentorship sessions. It offers several features to give hosting and attending a session a more personal connection. Read on to learn about breakout rooms, polls, screen sharing, remote control, and troubleshooting common issues for hosting a Zoom meeting.

Zoom Break-Out Rooms

Break out rooms are a great way to hold smaller coding sessions off of a larger group meeting. It can provide a space for 1:1 mentorship or can provide a group of learners working on a specific skill, language, or project.

Admins – Setup a breakout room:

Prior to meeting go to the Zoom website:
Account -> Settings -> Break-out Room (very far down the page, ctrl+f to search) and switch it ON.

PRE-ASSIGNMENT

You can pre-assign users to breakout rooms before a session based on emails, or just assign during the call. If people register for the session using a different email then the pre-assignment will not work.

Note: It may be best to allocate 5 minutes during a session call to assign individuals.

To pre assign:

1. Click Meetings, then Schedule a Meeting
2. In the Meeting Options section, select Breakout Room pre-assign and click Create Rooms.
3. Click the plus icon beside Rooms to add breakout rooms.
4. Hover over the default breakout room name and click the pencil icon to rename.
5. In the Add participants text box, search for participants’ name or email address to add them to the breakout room. Then save.

To assign during the call:

1. Start an instant or scheduled meeting.
2. Click Breakout Rooms.
3. Select the number of rooms you would like to create, and how you would like to assign your participants to those rooms:
   • Automatically: Let Zoom split your participants up evenly into each of the rooms.
   • Manually: Choose which participants you would like in each room.
4. Click Create breakout rooms.
5. Actions from in the room:
   • Join: Join breakout room.
   • Leave: Leave the room and return to the main meeting (only shows when in a breakout room).
   • Close All Rooms: Stops all rooms after a 60 second countdown, returns all participants back to the main meeting.

Zoom Polling

Ensure Polling is enabled for all members of a specific group or all users:

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an administrator with the privilege to edit user groups.
2. In the navigation menu, click User Management then Group Management.
3. Click the name of the group, then click the Settings tab.
4. Navigate to the Polling option on the Meeting tab and verify that the setting is enabled.
5. If the setting is disabled, click the toggle to enable it. If a verification dialog displays, choose Turn On to verify the change.
6. Start the scheduled Zoom meeting that has polling enabled.
7. Click Polls in the meeting controls.
8. Select the poll you would like to launch. Or, create a poll on the spot.
9. Click Launch Poll.

Screen Share

1. Green button in the middle of the bottom of the screen
2. Share desktop for multiple applications
3. Share application for Scratch or browser based applications

Annotations

Use annotations to draw on a shared screen.

Remote control

Request or give control of a computer so that a mentor can help resolve issues quickly.

• Request: When someone is sharing > Zoom bar >
• Give: When sharing your screen, Zoom bar > Remote Control > Give access to “select person”.

System preferences

Users will need to give Zoom permissions access to their system. Once a user has accepted an invitation to give control for the first time, their computer should open a dialog prompt to ask for permission. The person who requested control will only see that access has been accepted, but until permission is granted the requestor will not be able to control the user’s computer.

Trouble shooting

General

• Multiple participants can share simultaneously, this can be tricky to navigate with one monitor and requires toggling back and forth between shared screens.
• When someone opens a share screen it focuses screen and maximizes, this can be changed in your Zoom settings.

Chromebook

• Annotations and request access do not work on Chromebook
• Users cannot see the presenter when they sharing their screen on a Chromebook