Search engine giant Google has launched a new breakout rooms feature for its Meet application. Google Meet is a video-conferencing platform developed by Google. It is hugely popular for group video calls. The new breakout rooms feature is available for G Suite Enterprise customers for Education. The company said that it will be made available for other platforms later. The feature lets users divide participants. Participants of a video call can be divided into small groups. Google said that this has been done to ensure more engagement. According to the company, 100 breakout rooms can be made during a single video call.
The feature has been developed keeping the teachers’ and educators’ requirement in the mind. They can now break classes into small groups. Google said that it has also made it easier for smaller groups to rejoin the original call. Google’s statement said that splitting groups will increase engagement. The company has added a feature to manually move people from one group to another. It added that only event creators have been given the right to create breakout rooms. Any participant can join the groups using a Google account. They can join through the web or through the Google Meet app. The feature will be available by default. Also, there is no admin control.
Educators were demanding the breakout rooms feature for a long. They believe that diving students into small groups will enhance the productivity and quality of discussion. Earlier in September, Google introduced a new feature for Meet users. It said that users can now see up to 49 people simultaneously. Google also announced the extension of unlimited calls in the free version of Google Meet. This policy will remain in place till March 31 next year. Google said that anyone with a Google account can create free meetings. A total of 100 people can join the meeting. There is no time limit, but a single call can last for 24 hours. The breakout rooms feature is available on the video-calling platform Zoom for years.