7 Best Webinar Platforms and Strategies To Run Breakout Rooms
The breakout rooms are a powerful feature in virtual events and webinars, designed to enhance engagement and interaction among participants. This feature transforms a large, passive webinar audience into smaller, more intimate settings where participants can actively engage with each other. However, to make your breakout sessions successful, you need to use the best webinar platform and consider incorporating best practices.
In this guide, we will delve into the benefits, best practices, and best webinar platforms of breakout rooms.
What is a Breakout Room in Webinar
A webinar breakout room is a virtual space that allows attendees to meet in separate sessions with smaller groups in a webinar.
A more personalized and engaging experience is offered in these rooms, which may not be possible in the main room.
In the group room, participants can participate in a variety of activities, including networking, brainstorming sessions, and group discussions. It is similar to a small meeting held as part of a larger event, where attendees can interact and work together more closely.
In a team room, participants can send chat messages to each other and chat with the meeting organizer and co-host in a more meaningful way. After a breakout session, participants can get a local record of their session.
Simply put, breakout rooms in webinars allow attendees to engage in more meaningful connections and interactions.
Benefits of Using Webinar Platform With Breakout Rooms
Webinar breakout rooms offer numerous benefits for both presenters and participants, making them a valuable feature in virtual events and webinars. Here are some of the key advantages:
Enhanced Engagement: Breakout rooms allow participants to engage in smaller, more intimate discussions. This can lead to increased engagement and interaction compared to a large, passive webinar audience.
Collaborative Learning: Breakout rooms facilitate collaboration among participants. They can work together on group activities, brainstorming sessions, or problem-solving exercises, fostering a sense of community and shared learning.
Networking: Breakout rooms are ideal for networking events or conferences. Participants can meet and connect with like-minded individuals or potential collaborators in a smaller setting. This can be more comfortable and conducive to building relationships.
Flexibility: Organizers can dynamically assign participants to breakout rooms, switch between rooms, or bring everyone back to the main session, providing flexibility to adapt to changing needs during the webinar.
Increased Participation: Some participants may be hesitant to speak up in a large webinar but more willing to participate in a smaller breakout room setting, leading to a broader range of voices and perspectives.
7 Best Webinar Platforms With Breakout Rooms
Here is a list of the best webinar platforms you can use for breakout rooms and sessions.
1.Dreamcast Webinar Plus:
Webinar Plus is an all-in-one webinar platform with breakout rooms features and capabilities. It helps businesses to host a range of online events and webinars. It can support with every stage of the process, including promoting a webinar, capturing lead data, nurturing your leads, creating on-demand content, or sending follow-up emails.
Moreover, the platform supports large audience webinars of up to 2000 attendees or above. So, you can rest assured that your webinar platform with breakout rooms will be hosted without getting it crashed in the middle of the session. The organizer and attendees get an easy-to-use interface and functionalities to make your event successful and seamless.
Since Webinar Plus is browser-based, it eliminates the need for the users to download on their local device. This way it can be integrated with lots of third-party apps and software while keeping the engagement of the audience intact.
Key features:
Breakout rooms for large audience: When hosting a large event, you can create many breakout rooms on the go depending on the audience size that shows up. You can also create rooms in advance based on the structure of your event.
Flexibility to assign participants: You can assign participants to the breakout room manually, automatically, or let them choose. They can also switch between rooms. This way, you can quickly tweak and change your team room setup, manage unwanted agenda changes, or respond to attendee preferences.
Built-in engagement features: Webinar Plus offers you many interactive engagement features to engage your audience throughout the sessions. Your team can use emoji reactions, screen sharing, live polls, and question upvoting as part of the attendee’s interaction. This way, you gain insights about what your attendees want and can tailor the content to meet the audience’s needs.
Customizations: You can also change your virtual background using the templates you get in Webinar Plus. You can add branding to your sessions to make them look more customized for your target audience. You can also enable video and audio, set timers, and allow screen sharing.
2.Zoom
Zoom is another popular and one of the best webinar platforms with breakout rooms. Although there is a browser-based version, the Zoom application is relatively feature-rich and stable. Zoom integrates with more than 1,000 business tools, so you can visualize customer data and run analytics while hosting your webinar.
Key features:
Flexibility in assigning participants: You and your co-hosts can assign participants to a team meeting room manually or automatically, or let participants choose the room themselves.
Custom settings: You can mute attendees’ video and audio to minimize distractions, set timers so you can keep track of your agenda, and turn on room notifications so attendees don’t miss important reminders.
Collaboration tools: Your participants can interact with Zoom’s collaboration tools like screen sharing, whiteboard, and file sharing.
Host control: You can control breakout rooms with the ability to join and leave rooms, broadcast messages to all rooms, and close breakout rooms at any time.
3. Webex
Cisco Webex is known for its scalability and powerful webinar platform with breakout rooms feature. It’s compatible with all Cisco products, so you can connect with everyone in the actual conference room via Voice over IP (VOIP) phones. Webex supports 100 breakout sessions for 1,000 participants, 10 in each room.
Key features:
Pre-assign participants: You can pre-assign attendees to specific team meeting rooms before the webinar begins, ensuring a more organized and productive experience.
Automatic or manual assignment: You can assign participants to the room manually or automatically, depending on your group size and preferences.
Custom settings: You can set time limits, enable video or audio, or allow participants to share their screens in a team room.
Broadcast messages: If you want to send a message to conference participants or presenters, you can propagate the message to all team rooms. This facilitates effective communication and coordination between the host and the presenter.
4. Livewebinars
LiveWebinars is also browser-based which allows advanced branding, and analytics, and integrates with over 1,000 popular CRM and marketing tools like Zapier and MailChimp. It supports up to 1,000 participants with active voice and video.
Key features:
Ask the presenter for help options: If you or your presenter isn’t in the group session, attendees can use this button to notify the presenter and get help.
Save and share: The recording is saved to your local storage, so you can easily access it after the webinar and share it with attendees.
Flexible assignments: You can assign participants to the breakout room manually, or do it automatically using the “Randomize” button.
5. Google Meet
While Google Meet doesn’t offer as many advanced features as the other webinar platforms on this list, it’s a reliable and easy-to-use option. It integrates with all tools like Google Calendar, Slides, Sheets, and Google Docs, which can help simplify planning and collaboration processes.
Key features:
Multiple co-hosts: By default, each meeting room has only one chairperson. But you can assign up to 25 co-hosts to manage team rooms.
Breakthrough room timer: When you set a timer, attendees will be notified 30 seconds before their assigned room closes.
Rooms customizations: You can rename rooms according to your preference and move participants between rooms according to your needs.
6. GoTo Webinar
GoTo Webinar is a webinar-focused product of GoTo group. It has an easy-to-use interface and features like a personalized signup page, email reminders, screen sharing, and chat features.
Key features:
Support options. If your attendees need help in a team room, they can click the support icon and select an option to get help.
Broadcast messages. You can send messages to all team rooms, but participants cannot reply to you.
Preview rooms. You can preview the allocation of attendees between rooms before confirming and assigning them.
7. Adobe Connect
Adobe Connect is an interactive webinar platform with breakout rooms and all the features you need to host, train, and engage your audience. You can customize the layout of your rooms and also engage your audience with polls, quizzes, and surveys.
Key features:
Create multiple rooms. You can create up to 20 group meeting rooms with 200 participants each.
Prepare Mode: You can create custom room layouts during your webinar in Prepared Mode so that attendees are not distracted by changes.
Manage permissions. You can allow participants to use modules such as whiteboards, file sharing, and audio and video sharing when the team session begins.
Engagement tools. Run live polls and use discussion modules so your audience can leave questions, comments, or reactions.
8 Strategies to Run Breakout Rooms Worth Attendee’s Attention
To run breakout rooms that add value for your webinar attendees, it’s essential to plan and execute them thoughtfully. Here are several ways to ensure that breakout rooms enhance the overall attendee experience:
1. Clear Objectives:
Before using breakout rooms, establish clear objectives for each session. Define what participants should achieve or discuss in the breakout rooms and communicate these objectives clearly at the beginning.
2. Facilitators or Moderators:
Assign a facilitator or moderator to each breakout room to guide discussions, keep participants engaged, and ensure that the objectives are met.
3. Structured Activities:
Plan structured activities or discussions in each breakout room. This could include brainstorming sessions, group projects, case studies, role-playing exercises, or problem-solving tasks related to the webinar topic.
4. Open Questions and Discussion:
Encourage open-ended questions and discussions in breakout rooms to stimulate critical thinking and engagement. Avoid yes/no questions that may lead to shallow conversations.
5. Provide Resources:
Share relevant resources, documents, or materials with participants in advance or during the breakout room sessions to support their discussions and activities.
6. Use Engagement Tools:
Use engagement tools like polls, surveys, or chat prompts to keep participants engaged and gather real-time insights during breakout room sessions.
7. Feedback and Reporting:
Encourage participants to take notes or provide feedback during breakout room sessions. This feedback can be valuable for post-webinar discussions or follow-up activities.
8. Follow-Up Activities:
Consider post-webinar follow-up activities, such as discussion forums, group assignments, or webinars with guest speakers related to the breakout room topics. This helps reinforce learning and engagement.
What to Look For in Webinar Platforms with Breakout Rooms
When evaluating webinar breakout rooms, whether you’re choosing a platform or assessing the success of breakout sessions during a webinar, there are several key factors to consider. Here’s what to look for:
Ease of Use:
The breakout room feature should be intuitive and user-friendly for both organizers and participants. Ensure that participants can easily join, leave, and navigate between breakout rooms without technical issues.
Customization Options:
Look for platforms that allow you to customize the breakout room settings, such as the number of rooms, room duration, and automatic or manual room assignment. Ensure you can rename breakout rooms to reflect their purpose or topic.
Participant Limit:
Check the platform’s participant limit for breakout rooms. Ensure it can accommodate the number of attendees you expect.
Engagement Tools:
Check for engagement tools like polls, surveys, chat, or hand-raising features that can be used in breakout rooms to enhance interaction.
Moderation Controls:
Evaluate the platform’s moderation features, including the ability to assign facilitators or moderators to each breakout room. Ensure that moderators can jump between rooms, monitor discussions, and address any issues that arise.
Final Words
Breakout rooms are a great way to connect with a specific group of participants in a large virtual event or webinar. Using the best webinar platform and best practices, you can make a breakout room successful. If you add breakout rooms as part of your large virtual event, you can take attendees’ experience to the next level.
