Shuffling Breakout Rooms

[RichardB]

I can't seem to find a definitive answer to this one!

When you assign breakout rooms, is there any way (after a set time or on a host control) that the participants can be randomly shuffled around without closing them all down and reopening them?

[Bort]

No, this is currently not possible. 

[caoimhinsmo]

The lack of a facility to shuffle membership of breakout rooms is by far the biggest problem I have with Zoom.  I use Zoom to run language-practice conversation meetings, and it is important that learners be paired (or grouped) with different learners each time.  I don’t mind having to close all rooms and recreate them, but even that does not seem to shuffle the rooms properly, often putting participants together repeatedly.  As far as I can work out, Zoom often places the participants with the slowest computers or Zoom clients together in the last rooms it creates.  Perhaps when you ask it to recreate the rooms, it polls the clients and the first to reply get placed in the first room, and so on?

Really, Zoom should be able to remember which participants were in which rooms last time, or even the last few times, and should have a facility to mix them up, avoiding pairing participants with others whom they had been with just recently.  But failing that, even if Zoom performed a true randomization when you recreate the rooms, that would be a big advance on the current situation.

Or does anyone know of some way around this problem, something I have missed?

[abbyg]

I agree - Zoom repeats the pairings often, even when I "recreate" the rooms. When facilitating on my own, it makes it harder and I try to remember - or even write down! - who is in which room to ensure they are shuffled next time. This happens less in large groups, but still can happen. It is frustrating. I agree - at least a random shuffle would be different. Please Zoom!