Zoom Breakout Rooms and Collaborative Learning

Christopher Dean

Learning to Zoom Over a Long Weekend

On March10 2020, the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) moved to wholly online instruction. Like everyone teaching at UCSB I tried to very rapidly figure out how to teach courses that were supposed to meet face-to-face in an online setting. I was scrambling for technologies, pedagogies, and anything else that could help me make learning meaningful for my students online.

One of the technologies that I ended up using to some good effect was Zoom. This is not to say that Zoom was a perfect tool. I know from conferencing with students and reflective writing that they experienced that “Zoom Fatigue” (Miller). However, I found that Zoom breakout rooms were a good pedagogical tool if I applied what I learned about group work from a seeming life-time ago when I was a secondary school English language arts teacher. Suddenly all the collaborative learning theory and research I studied in 1992-1993 became incredibly relevant again.

What follows is the theory and research behind my approach to Zoom group work via breakout rooms, then a sharing of the success and lessons learned from using Zoom breakout rooms, and finally some thoughts for the future.

Collaborative Learning Theory and Research and its Applicability to Zoom

For me, collaborative learning flows from Ken Bruffee’s work (which you would expect from a compositionist) and from 1990s-2000s textbooks on English language arts pedagogy (which you would be less likely to expect from a compositionist).

From Bruffee and composition scholars, I found myself introduced to the “big picture” of collaborative learning. For instance, Bruffee writes at the end of his famous 1984 College English article “Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind’” that:

What’s in bold is what I take from Bruffee: we have to plan for collaborative learning, and we want and need to think beyond doing “something that works” with collaborative learning to helping students see collaborative learning as “genuine” learning (Bruffee 652).

But teaching through collaborative learning is NOT just about theory—or about the why of it. There have to be reasons for the “what” and “how” of collaborative learning.

To get at that, it’s important to look at what educators have to say about collaborative learning in their research because educators who write about collaborative learning, in everything from journal articles to books on pedagogy, drill down to the particular. From them we can learn about key ideas about what makes collaborative learning work in writing classes—both on and offline.

Below is a description of how I set up collaborative learning via Zoom for my Writing for Multimedia Class (Wr105M) in the Spring of 2020—with each move explained from research into collaborative learning and teaching with Zoom.

• I used standing, teacher assigned groups. In the research on collaborative learning, there is a lot of discussion and no clear consensus about what is the “best way” to assign students to groups. However, there seems to be some support for the idea that students tend to form lower performing homogenous (in terms of knowledge and performance on learning tasks) when given free choice (Burke 90). Also, Burke makes the point that, “Research suggests that groups which are assigned by the instructor tend to perform better than self-selected groups” (90). Thus, I randomly assigned students to groups of five.  I’ll now explain why I chose groups of five.

• I choose odd numbered groups. Donald Orlich and his co-authors make an interesting point about the importance of group size: that while there is no absolute right number, because that number varies on instructional intent and the purpose of groups, there is some reason to believe that “five” could be an “ideal number” for collaborative discussion groups (231). I have cleaved to this notion for nearly 27 years, and also my point with my groups was to minimize cross-talk (which can readily happen if folks can engage easily in paired conversation) and to maximize on-task work and create a sense of belonging.

• I gave groups a defined task and role. For any collaborative group work to actually help students learn to write, there need to be carefully defined tasks and roles (Brame and Biel; Strickland and Strickland). The “number and names roles” don’t matter, but the work needs to be purpose driven (Strickland and Strickland 29). For the collaborative activities I share below you can see that they have discrete, definite tasks.

• I used Zoom, but I didn’t let Zoom use me. Zoom is a new tool that many instructors are using, and there is no shortage of “tips and tricks” about how to use Zoom, and many of the tips and tricks mention to “use Zoom breakout rooms” (Hobart and William Smith Colleges). But I would remind people of this enduring bit of advice about using any computer technology to teach from Cindy Selfe: “Don't forget about literacy. Humans and human communication, not computers, should be at the center of English classrooms” (70). This reminder, that we need to think about human connection and humans first, is still timely when we are scrambling to come up with ways of using Zoom and other platforms to teach in online spaces.

At the end of it all, I want to share with you a use of a technology, Zoom, that allowed students to connect to each other in a way that was absolutely necessary during the Covid-19 epidemic. In their reflective writing for the course I’m highlighting, an upper division GE Writing course on multimedia writing, students mentioned that they felt connected to other students and me via Zoom and standing groups (which centered on the blog work I asked them to do in our course management system). I also know that what I’m about to share with you absolutely did help students learn about graphic design concepts and writing.

So let me share some particular images and ideas with you about how to make Zoom breakout rooms work pedagogically.

If you look below, you can see that I’m asking folks to go into breakout groups and tell me which designs they prefer in reference to a key reading for the class: a selection from Robin William’s classic The Non-Designer's Design Book, which focused on issues of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

The discussion, when I dropped into the Zoom breakout rooms, seemed to go swimmingly—with students interacting with each other and making comments like, “the contrasting colors of the fish and coral drew me in.”

I also, for the first time in in three weeks, heard laughter. Clearly affiliative work was happening too.

Also, students were working through a key idea in design: that designs need to make sure that they are carefully planned and executed around key design ideas: like contrast of colors, repetition of fonts, alignment of objects in an image, and the idea that things close to each other are together for a reason.

Let me share one more example, from later in the quarter. In our last Zoom breakout session, I asked students to help me co-construct the final rubric that I would use to grade an infographic project that they created.

The upshot of this work was that students thought about assessment, created new language and standards for the assessment of their work, and made a real contribution to the design of the class and its assessment.

Also, I wanted to involve my students in their own assessment for issues of equity. I knew, from the blogging that they did, their Zoom conferences with me, and the reflective writing that they did on their major projects for the class that some students were struggling with the new digital divide: probably at least 10% of my students did not having ready access to high speed internet.

Questions for the Future and Future “Best Practices” with Zoom Collaborative Learning

Shira Ovide points out the seriousness of the new digital divide in her New York Times Article “’We Can Do Better’: One Plan to Erase America’s Digital Divide: “Microsoft estimates that 157 million Americans — about half the population — aren’t using relatively fast internet connections. The government, using different counting methods, says more than 21 million Americans, mostly in rural areas, don’t have access to fast internet.”

I tried to mitigate this problem by always providing an asynchronous activity for students to do in lieu of Zoom meetings, and those activities dealt with the same issues. However, there was no in-time collaboration, something that I and students valued, in the work. My feeling going forward is that I could set up Google docs, which I used in the class on other occasions, to facilitate real-time interchanges of ideas for those who, through no fault of their own, do not have access to the high speed internet that Zoom demands.

I’m also interested in more directly discussing the digital divide in my writing courses going forward. Zoom provides a way to connect, but it costs schools a great deal of money to provide this connection, and there is no guarantee that folks will be able to reliably use this tool for collaborative learning unless they have access to high speed internet connectivity.

Now I need to figure out even more directly how to use Zoom, and back it up, in ways that are consonant with my deep commitment to equity in education. Also, I need to continue to refine my use of Zoom—remembering to let pedagogy, not technology, drive my teaching and my students’ attendant learning. Collaborative learning theory and research will continue to drive my teaching via Zoom and breakout rooms. My hope is to build on this knowledge and create an accessible, just platform for students to do the sort of collaborative work that they and I value, the sort of collective work that we desperately need to happen inside of, and outside of, digital classroom spaces.

Works Cited

Brame, Cynthia J., and Rachel Biel. "Group Work: Using Cooperative Learning Groups Effectively." Vanderbilt University 2015. Web. 6/25/2020 2020.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Collaborative Learning and The "Conversation of Mankind"." College English 46.7 (1984): 635-52.

Burke, Alison. "Group Work: How to Use Groups Effectively." The Journal of Effective Teaching 11.2 (2011): 87-95.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges. "Pedagogy in Times of Disruption." 2020. Web. 6/25/2020 2020.

Miller, Ryan M. "What's 'Zoom Fatigue'? Here's Why Video Calls Can Be So Exhausting." USA Today 2020.

Orlich, Donald C., et al. Teaching Strategies: A Guide to Better Instruction. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1990.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "Computers in the Classroom: The Humanization of Computers: Forget Technology, Remember Literacy." The English Journal 77.6 (1988): 69-71.

Strickland, Kathleen, and James Strickland. Engaged in Learning: Teaching English, 6-12. Heinemann, 2002.

Williams, Robin. The Non-Designers Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice. 2nd ed. ed. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley, Peachpit Press, 2004.